The Audience With Forever
by Brain0Rat
Summary: Supernatural/FMA AU Crossover. As Dean's time draws near, the Winchester brothers discover the secrets of an odd 'family', wise and unaged for a hundred years. It was, however, not their intent to drag the Elrics into their world of the supernatural.
1. Chapter 1

Rating: CH1-R, NC-17 Over-All

Word Count: 9,000 +

Notes: FMA/SPN crossover, Ed/Al, Dean/Sam, Sam/Al, Crossover, AU, WTF. Checked but unbeta'd. Read at your own risk, as the author is incapable of writing normal, sane fic. Instead, she puts ridiculous amounts of time and effort into...this.

**An Audience With Forever**

Chapter One

It was a half-suburban contrived thing of smooth, black asphalt and crisp, painted lines. Skidmarks on the corners, gum on the sidewalks, dull, green weeds peaking from between narrow cracks along the surface.

Dean snorted and rubbed his hands over his face, willing wakefulness without coffee. He grit his teeth and tugged idly at his hair. He needed a trim and a shave. "Food, Sam!" The sun rose, slowly, making Sam's shadow stretch far across the sidewalk and onto the manicured lawn. He could smell the coffee and the bagels and normalcy of that trendy coffeeshop down the block.

"The only thing that's open is McDonald's." Sam said, just loud enough for Dean to hear from the second landing of the Motel 6. He didn't turn from the crossroads, hands in the pockets of his worn hoodie and breath fogging in desert-morning chill.

"Goddamn suburbs."

"Watch it. Cowboys might lynch us." Sam laughed up at him, neck turned at an odd angle. Dean groaned and let his forehead rest against the mint-green painted railing. Last night was a fucking joke. Right above the trendy coffeeshop, with its lackluster bands and half-wit comedians, up a flight of wooden stairs was 'Montana'. A bar. Bars were familiar, full of people, girls to flirt with, beers to nurse with their heads together over Sam's computer and Dad's journal and Dean's spider-scribbled notes in a coil-bound notebook.

"Cowboys. Right. You mean the soccer moms in their fuckin' miniSUVs." Dean growled into the leather of his jacket, face hidden in his arms.

They had walked through the doors. Took in the bright lighting, the perfectly clean sawdust on the floors. The less-than-fit girls in knee-high cowboy boots and midriff-baring tops. The odd rock-pop-country abomination blaring from Bose speakers. Clean-cut motherfuckers betting quarters on their pool games. The Bud-fucking-Light tap behind the bar. The people LINE DANCING. Line-fucking-dancing.

Without a word between them, they had slowly backed out of the swinging doors and settled for not laughing at the comedians at the Coffee Bazar. Bad coffee, annoying pseudo-intellectuals who prided themselves on their scholarships from Citrus college. It was fucking surreal.

"I don't know. They were pretty hot." Sam settled beside him, forearms on the railing.

Dean looked at him in disbelief, horror written across his gruff prettyboy face. Sam gathered his loose shirt in a mimic of bellyrolls and winked at him. They both laughed. Perhaps a bit too much. Fake bellyrolls and fucking Montana wasn't really that funny.

* * *

"We should be there by seven." Sam traced the thick line on the map labeled 210 West - Pasadena. "If traffic allows."

"Man." Dean sipped the sawdust and burn taste of McDonald's coffee. "California traffic is such a bitch. Lemme see those pics again? Thanks." He opened the plain manilla folder, soft with wrinkles at the corners. Pictures - mostly computer print-outs - spread over the McDonald's patio furniture. "Hey, dude." He nudged Sam. "Is this him with Martin Luther King Jr.?"

Sam leaned over to inspect it closely, one eyebrow raised. "Yeah, it is."

"The fuck is a German whiteboy doing with him?" Dean cleared his throat, pitching his voice deep. "I have a dream, that one day, I will hook up on da down low wit-"

"Dean!" Sam laughed. "That is so - it's just -"

"What? Dude's even prettier than you, Sammy." He picked up the print-out, tilting his head to the side. "Y'see there? They look pretty cozy-"

"DEAN!"

"Okay, okay. Shit, man." He tossed the picture back onto the haphazard pile, over grainy black and white photos from 1920, with captions in German. Ones in French, from 1950, in muted colors. From 1980, Japan, and the most recent photograph, a simple Alumni photo from Oxbridge University. The article dated it 1997. All odd, small snippets in old, foreign newspapers. Back indexes of scientific essays and studies. A bitch to find, but they found it.

The man hadn't aged a day.

* * *

The wide freeway lanes and dusty, monochrome quarries of San Dimas gave way to the narrow, lush streets of Pasadena. Little, frou-frou fenced trees lined the sidewalks, storefronts both unique and chain, mannequins poised elegantly in windows. Dogs waited for their owners outside of Starbucks, tied in little rows of Chihuahuas and Labradors and Golden Retrievers, giant mutts and little rat-things. It was a metropolitan life, a shopper's paradise, a bitch to maneuver a classic Impala through.

Dean grit his teeth and scooted the Impala as close as he dared to the parked cars, watching with a death glare as the driver squeezed his little Toyota through what was, originally, a one-lane street. "California drivers are fucking nuts."

"Seems a little odd that he'd live here." Sam checked the GPS on his cell-phone. "Make a left."

Dean gave a bland look to the gridlock before him. "Right. Of course."

"I just think it's odd." Sam tugged idly at his hair. "German engineer, Oxbridge Professor - and he chooses to live here?"

"Maybe he loves the people." Dean curled his lips at the people blocking the fucking intersection.

"Mm. No, remember what Doctor McHallen said?"

"From Oxbridge? How the fuck could I forget in that accent?" Dean exhaled, annoyed, and shook his head.

"They were kinda prissy. Stuck up. Hm?"

"Now you know how I feel about you." Dean muttered, turning the wheel this way and that, knuckles going white around the grip. Still. Blocking. The intersection.

"What?" Sam leaned close and narrowed his eyes. "What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing. Fuck this." The car lurched, revved like a fucking God. Tires squealed. There was the smell of burnt rubber.

"Dean - Dean - Dean, what the hell are you doing!? DEAN!" Sam clutched the armrest as they swerved around and barely missed taking the bumper of an H3 Hummer. Dean smirked. The tires squealed, momentum sang, Dean swung the car around and cut off an Audi.

"Shit. I think your bumper hit them."

"Psh. Did not."

"That was - that was retarded."

"That was awesome. Admit it. C'mon, Sammy. Admit it."

"Make a right on Green."

"Right on it!"

Sam sighed.

* * *

At around eight AM, they pulled into a quaint little side-street, mature trees overhead, quiet and subdued. It was the house at the end of the block. Through iron gates they saw a lush, sprawling yard, a veritible mansion of classic brick, a mature oak tree with yellowing leaves sketching color through the lawn. If not for the palm trees towering behind the property, it would have been extremely remnicent of Oxbridge.

"You were saying something about 'odd'?" Dean drolled, leaning out the car window to get a better view.

"This must cost a fucking fortune."

"Dude's about a hundred years old, Sam. More than enough time to make a fortune. Oh, callbox."

Dean was halfway out and to the callbox when Sam hissed - "DEAN!"

"What?"

"Let's think about this for a second!"

"What the hell is there to think about?" Dean growled, stomping, like a petulant child, to lean into the car window. "We go in, ask him how he did it, leave!"

"He's an immortal! It's not that goddamn simple, Dean - in other cultures, there are rules to approaching immortals -"

"Look, for all we know, he's really a senile, hundred-year-old man with really good face cream, okay?"

"And for all we know, he's not human. Or, if he is, he made a deal with gods or demons!" Sam snipped back.

"Wow. I got the shit bargain, didn't I?" Dean laughed, eyes averted to the swooping, tall gates.

Sam clenched his jaw and exhaled, slowly, through his nose. Dean stilled his laughter, then, and didn't need to look to see Sam rake his fingers through his hair, or the timid, gentle tremble of those fingers. "Sorry, man." He said. "Look, we can hedge all we want, right?" He shrugged. "Not gonna do us anything. I'll be respectful. Promise."

"No talking about his tryst with Martin Luther King Jr.?"

"Promise."

Dean turned back to the call box. The gate was already open, without a sound of motor or squeaking hinges.

* * *

The door opened before Dean could put a finger to the doorbell.

A kid answered the door. A boy, with flushed cheeks and a pretty face. "Yes?" He said, in a high, unbroken voice. A cultured voice.

"Uh, hey kid." Dean tried his best to smile and charm. The kid, so far, did not look impressed. "I'm Mack - that's Jon, my brother -" He motioned to Sam, who held up a hand in greeting. "Jon here's an old student of your - uh, Dad's -"

"My Dad died years ago." The kid said, not unkindly. He did take a step back into the foyer, though. Bad sign. Bad, bad sign.

"Oh, sorry." Sam cringed.

"You must be talking about my brother. Edward Elric?"

Brother? Okay. Completely off into left field now. "Yeah, that's him. I didn't know he had a brother!"

"Oh, you wouldn't." The kid said, disimissively. He opened the door wider. "Brother likes to keep his personal life and work life very separate." His eyes, an odd amalgam of metal color and earth tones, narrowed. "I'm surprised you'd want to visit him, though."

"Well, we were in the area." Sam shrugged. "I never got a chance to tell him I appreciated his talk on 'The Science of Humanitarian Efforts' back in Stanford -"

"He told me that was a good session." This time, the kid smiled, openly, proudly. "Still, it's your funeral, I guess. Unfortunately." He opened the door fully so they could speak in honest, open terms. "You've missed him by a day. He's in France, right now. He should be back tomorrow night."

"Ah, shit." Dean hissed.

"Did you have somewhere to go?"

"No, no. It's just we drove out here from Stanford a day early to catch him, you know? We're staying with reletives in, uh, LA, actually. Nothin' much to do." Dean shrugged, open-handed, a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. This was going to shit, and fast. Since when were kids this smart and not gullible!?

The boy wrinkled his nose delicately at the mention of LA. "It smells of piss and trash in Los Angeles."

"Yeah, exactly." Sam laughed.

The kid looked at them thoughtfully. Any cliches about young eyes with great wisdom went right out the door. It was outright impossible to read him. He pursed his lips - girl's lips, full and pink - and said, finally - "You're welcome to stay, if you'd like. It gets a little lonely with just Noa and I." He lead them through the door. "I'm Alphonse, by the way. Here, let me take your coats. Are either of you hungry?"

"Yes." Said Dean.

"I really don't want to intrude." Said Sam.

They both glared at each other. Alphonse laughed, a free sound, as he hung up their coats. "You two remind me of me and Brother."

"Must be a universal sibling thing." Dean grinned.

"Oh, I doubt it." Alphonse said, airily. "The bathroom's down the hall, second door to your left. Kitchen's over here. It's time I cooked breakfast for us, anyway."

Al dissapeared into a doorway just slightly ahead - the kitchen, obviously. They went to their appointed direction. The hall was something rather inconspicuous for all its luxury - embossed green and creme striped wallpaper, polished oak molding, inlaid wood floors.

It was a duel sink. They closed the door after them, turned the water on.

"Get anything?" Dean whispered, quickly.

Sam fished the EMF reader from his inside jacket pocket, unhooking the earpiece from his ear, hidden beneath his hair and jacket collar which would allow him to hear the tell-tale squeals and beeps of any electromagnetic activity. "Not a peep."

"Do you think he's really his brother?"

"That would mean he's immortal too, right? Unless his hundred-fourteen-year-old parents had another kid."

"Maybe he's not his brother."

"What, then?"

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Did you see the way that kid looked?"

"Yeah. You can see the resemblence, not much, though, why?"

"Golddigger."

"You're fucking with me."

"What thirteen-year-old kid talks or moves like that?"

"Moves like what?"

"Sam, like a fucking stripper."

"You've lost it."

"Have I?"

"That's just so -"

"Not right? He's a European scholar from 1920, Sam. That shit was common in those groups."

"Was it?"

"I research too, ass."

"Are you sure they're not father-son?"

"Maybe." Dean obliged. "It would make sense to try to pass him off as a brother instead of a son, once he begins to age and Edward doesn't."

"Yeah, see?"

"I still don't like the way he acts. Where's his mom?"

"Oh, please, Dean." Sam dried his hands on impossibly fluffy towels, wincing as dirt and car oil smeared into the cream color. "People divorce. People die."

"Or are sacrificed for something - say, eternal youth?"

Silence settled between them.

"Either way you hack it, it's suspicious."

"Well, I'm not denying that. Maybe that Noa person is his mom."

"A chick named 'Noa'?"

* * *

Noa, it turned out, was certainly not his mother. Alphonse busied himself in the kitchen, somehow manning a sausage omelette and bacon and fresh biscuits at the same time, humming over the pops and splatters of hot oil.

She was an old woman, wrinkles deep in her face, her hair, thick and dark, dark grey. She sat in a wheelchair pulled up to the kitchen table, her brown skin mottled with age. Her eyes, hazy, brown, like too much milk poured into too little coffee. Her jewelry gleamed, a charicature above and beyond her. Her earrings, gold, large things, shifted as she creakily turned her neck to watch them. Her face remained unchanged.

He heard a tell-tale whirring and muted beep in his ear. He took a subtle step closer to her. A lean and shift, more than anything. He heard the whirr and beep again. Dean glanced at him. He looked back. A minute exchange. Dean knew.

"Ah, there you are. I'm almost done with breakfast." Al said, cheerily, as he slid bacon onto a plate. "Noa, this is Jon, one of brother's old students. From Standford. You remember?"

"Mm." She said, and Al smiled, a bright, unfettered gleam in his face. "And this is his brother, Mack. They came all the way out here from Stanford to say hi to Brother."

Noa said something - odd words, on a low, rasping breath. Al listened carefully. "Well, yes, bad timing, hm?"

She held out a gnarled, delicate hand to them, remnicent of old bark on small, slender twigs. Dean clenched his jaw, his muscles twitching beneath his yet-to-be-shaved morning stubble. Sam hedged, only a second, and reached forward to shake her hand. A proper image. A shy, young man. Dean was on his heels like a guard dog.

She moved quickly, and had a gentle, strong grip for an old woman. Her hands had callouses with the thin, lined skin of her palms. She held both their hands, and suddenly, her eyes were a clear, clear brown.

The EMF's earpiece shrieked, dully, in Sam's ear. He could barely catch what she was saying. They both tensed. Dean knew, very well, the weight of the pistol strapped securely between himself and his belt, hidden by his jacket.

"It's an old Romani saying." Alphonse explained, setting the table for four. "It's a blessing. For young people."

Noa let go of their hands, suddenly, and exhaled a shaking breath. It took every ounce of strength of Sam to not stumble away and take up a defensive stance.

"Thank you, ma'am." He whispered. Dean only nodded along, unable to take his eyes off her, an odd, empty feeling in his palms.

"Come, sit. Have breakfast. It's simple, but I hope you'll like it."

It was good. Really good. Sam told Alphonse stories about Stanford, and Alphonse told him, in careful, almost lilting words of his brother's latest projects, and so very incredibly vague about it on the whole. Noa watched, with eyes now clouded. Sometimes Al had to reach over to help her maneuver a fork, or lift a mug of coffee, strong and bitter and rich as the colors of her shawl.

* * *

"There's a few nice galleries, a Cheescake factory - oh, it's very, very good - on Colorado... really, just stick around Downtown and you'll find a decent number of things. Just please be back by nine. Noa goes to sleep then, and I'd hate for her to wake up to the doorbell."

"We'll be sure to do that. Thanks, Alphonse."

"Enjoy."

As the door closed, Dean mimicked "_We'll be sure to do that, thanks Alphonse._"

"Shut up." Sam said, over the creak of the Impala's door.

"Hey." Dean keyed the ignition. "Just make sure you don't fall for his boyish wiles -"

"Drive, Dean."

"I'm just making sure -"

"Dean!"

* * *

"Okay, so the situation is this -" Sam spoke clearly, firmly, as they wove their way through the midday lunch crowd. It wasn't difficult - people parted, automatically, Sam's height a very obvious visual marker.

"-The situation is this, Sam. This is not our normal gig."

"Well, yes -"

"Usually we find it, go in, salt and burn, and go for a beer after."

"Because it's been like that for the past four months, Dean."

Dean deflated. They passed the Cheesecake factory. The situation made even the most tempting sweet displays utterly repulsive.

"So, what exactly are we dealing with, here? Zombies?"

"I hope not. I don't think so. The EMF went off ONLY around Noa."

"Think she's the reason behind this? Why?"

"I don't know. You'd think she'd keep the whole eternal youth thing for herself."

"We're not after 'eternal youth'." Dean said, grimly, eyes locked on the crosswalk sign glowing red.

It switched to white. They stepped onto the street. "I know that." Sam whispered.

"Of course." Dean said. "This is our best bet, though."

"If they did make a deal with - with a demon. Or a god. To overcome death -"

"There's a sacrifice, Sam." Dean snapped. "There's ALWAYS a sacrifice. Demons don't deal like that. You know that."

Sam sighed, lips pursed, nostrils flaring, worried creases forming in the skin of his brow. "It's one day. One. Unless you have anyone else who's cheated death and age we can have a chat with, be my guest."

It was Dean's turn to sigh, jamming his hands roughly into the pockets of his jacket.

"Any research? Anything?"

"No."

"Okay, well, there are the Immaculates -"

"They die first."

"Right." Sam cleared his throat. Somewhere in their conversation, they had stopped, letting people part and weave around them. "In Buddhism, there's the Bodhi concept - someone so enlightened Karma doesn't apply to them anymore, and they become immortal -"

"So we're going to become monks?" Dean said, his eyebrow raised.

"If we have to!"

"Shit, man." Dean whined, his face screwed in a grimace, turning away as if the idea was so reprehensive. "It's not like THEY lived like monks!"

"True. Vampires?"

"Sunshine everywhere in the land of Better Homes and Gardens."

"Werewolves?"

"Are you just grasping for straws now?"

"Yes!"

"They didn't have any of the classic werewolf signs. It's close to the full moon. Why the hell would he invite us back?"

"They don't know, do they?"

"There have been no accounts of random missing people or animal abuse here or around here."

"France?"

Silence fell between then. "Let's check. There's a Starbucks around the corner."

"Wow. Who'da-"

"Don't say it."

"Fuckin' California."

"You used to like California."

"Yeah, when Dad was driving."

Sam laughed, half-heartedly. The reflection of people in the storefront windows, of them, was fleeting and translucent.

* * *

"There, now." Al said, softly, as he arranged braids, tied in red but now silver-light, on either side of her face. He smoothed the rest of her hair, gently letting it fall against her back. "You're beautiful as ever." Noa snorted, a wry smile trembling at her lips. Al kissed the crown of her head, his hands, soft and smooth, over her bangs, righting them carefully. "I mean it!"

She reached up and patted his hand with hers, her own still much bigger, much, it would seem, stronger. Decades later, Alphonse's thoughts, his memories, would wash over her as dewdrops evaporating in the sun - so gentle he regarded them, and the same calm swept over her mind. "They're gone."

She nodded, and motioned him close. Into the delicate shell of his ear, she whispered, her voice a rasp, dry and thin in the stark light of the window, the dark complexion of the wood-panel walls, the silver of her vanity mirror.

"I see." Al whispered, and at times like those, she could really remember his age. He cleared his throat, straightened his spine. "Well, how long has it been since the last one? Twenty years?"

She waved a hand, vaguely.

"Thank you for protecting brother and me." He said, softly, and kissed her forehead and her lips like he did in their youth. "Would you like to read?"

She nodded.

"Well, we have the updated thesis on -"

She hissed a Romani curse.

"USA Today it is." Al sighed, and laughed as she chuckled, deep in her chest. He settled beside her on the plush, deep couch, curling his smaller self into her, like he did when he was new and she was strong and it rained a deluge of water and smog on wet train platforms.

* * *

Sam leaned back, halfassed-made caramel mocha long gone cold. The barristas were starting to give them odd, rather sharp-eyed looks as the sun began to set. "Nothing." He sighed.

"Nothing?"

"A few kidnaps. All had witnesses or clues, though. No dissapearing into thin air."

"This guy's impossible to track." Dean chewed on his pencil, letting it splinter and crack between his teeth.

"As we've found out before."

"Eh, sloppy vampire?"

"When was the last time you've heard of that?"

"Elinor."

"Those were cows, Dean."

"Yeah, yeah."

"What time is it?" Sam asked, leaning forward again, face inches from the computer screen as he began to click and type, the furrow of his brow and quickness of his eyes cluing Dean into a plan of action.

"Seven, why?"

"Library's probably closed. Pasadena have a good one?"

"Probably not."

"Mm. Okay, so, we know roughly where he's been in the past hundred years. London, 1920. Transylvania, 1921-1922. Munich, 1923-1930-ish, or at least, that's when he ends up back in London. New York, then, 1940 -"

"You start cross-refferencing missing persons. I'll finish the timeline."

The street lights came on over stale coffee, long forgotten between the click of Sam's keypad and the harsh, blunt scribble of Dean's pen.

* * *

"You want to know how to cheat death." Alphonse said, in a serene, complacent way. He poured tea, amber and sweet with honey, into mismatched mugs.

Breakfast banter between the three went silent, then. Off in the foyer, a even the clip-clatter of the dogs' nails stopped. Shadows flitted, silhouettes of birds through the high, arched windows.

They shared a look between each other, curling broad hands and fingers with blunted, ragged nails around mugs of steaming tea. Habit. Dean's lips, Sam's lips, mirrors, set in impassivity. Dean leaned into the creaking old chair, exhaling a deep, deeply-held breath. They said nothing.

"You two are not the first, you know." Al took a sip of tea, sorted through the biscuits on the mosaic plate, watching them crumble beneath his fingers. "I don't think you'll be the last."

"How did - "

"Noa." He said, softly, nodding to her. "Is a clairvoyant. A bit similar to you, Sam, she tells me." He turned to Dean, suddenly, his eyes narrowed spitfire and cold, cold calculation. Too old and too much in that round, gentle thirteen-year-old face. "I don't like guns in this house, Mr. Winchester." Al said, a cold, clipped tone.

"I understand. Sorry." Dean didn't take his eyes off Al's, his jaw tense, his frame, all subtle muscle and masculine ease, left deceptively relaxed in his chair. "Standard occupation precautions."

"There is nothing here you have to be afraid of." Al spoke, kindly this time. Neither were fool enough to buy it.

"I think it's best if we just go for the rest of the day."

"I can't allow that." Al took a sip of his tea, bland in the way he said such forceful words. "Not until Brother comes back, and he thinks this over. You don't really expect our help without some consideration for us, do you?" He said, clearly amused.

"What kind of 'consideration'?"

"Secrecy, that's all." Al shrugged his small, round shoulders.

"By secrecy you mean -"

"It isn't such a bad place to stay, Dean." Al said, laughing. "We have the internet, books, a swimming pool, a pool table - I'm sure you'll find something to occupy your time for just a day."

"My time to spend where -"

"-Dean." Sam hissed.

Dean shut his mouth, leaning back into the chair, arms crossed, fingers curled into fists. Alphonse just smiled at this.

"And if we decide to leave?" Sam asked, slowly.

"If you leave, Brother won't tell you anything."

"How are you so certain?"

Alphonse smiled, a positively mischivious, fae expression. He leaned over to look Sam square in the eye, lifting a finger to his lips. "I'll tell him not to."

"And he does whatever you say."

"Pretty much." He shrugged, and settled back into his chair.

"It's not like anyone will believe us if we say something."

"People." Alphonse said, with a horribly weary, jaded tone. "Will believe anything under the right circumstances. But I'm not really worried about that. It's just insurance."

"Insurance." Dean scoffed.

"We'll stay." Sam said, easily.

"I'll need the gun." Al held his hand out, a small hand, too small for Dean's pistol.

"No way."

"Dean, just do it."

"Fuck -"

"DEAN!"

"Fuckit!" Dean dropped the clip and handed both to Alphonse, who stood to tuck it away in an upper cabinet. "You're getting fucking sloppy, Sam!"

"Easy." Al said. "I'm just keeping it here. You trust me, I trust you. I just really don't want it going off on accident, frightening the pets."

"I'm not enough of a newbie to have my own gun go off when I don't want it to."

"Of course." Al said, complacently, but still closed the cabinet doors. He laughed, as if there was no gun in his kitchen, and no imposters at his table. "Just like me and brother. I'm the younger - and always the more reasonable, right, Noa?"

Noa nodded, an unsteady, jolting movement.

"Oh, and for the record." Al said, gathering their plates, careful to leave Sam and Dean's untouched tea for them to finish. "My mother died before my dad did. I really am his brother - not a catamite, or a golddigger, or any of those odd things you were thinking of."

Dean twitched his fingers, as if to physically grasp a retort, something to save face. He stuttered, Al laughed, and he finally whirled a glare on Sam.

"What?"

"You and your mind-reading kind! Nothing is private!"

"Hey -"

Noa laughed. Wheezing, reedy, cracked. It hardly sounded as a laugh, but her eyes were bright, burnished, and clear.

* * *

"What now?" Dean asked, bouncing pool balls back and forth between himself and the lip of the pool table. Sam stood at the window, looking out at the lush, sprawling garden. Outside, Noa sat in her wheelchair, napping underneath a white gazebo crowned with climbing jasmine. Alphonse was tossing an old, faded rubber ball across the yard and into the pool. A pack of dogs - all strays, odd, scruffy mutts, mixed-breed here and there, a bit of collie, some german shepard, some labrador - chased the ball into the pool, competetive, and came running back, soaking wet.

"I don't know." Sam whispered. The cat on the windowsill beside him stretched, and yawned. Regarded him with half-open jade-green eyes, and resumed its nap. It was silent, while outside, the dogs shook water from their coats and Al held his hands up to fend the water off, laughing.

"Yeah? Well, what do you feel?"

"Feel?"

"You're a telepath. I don't got much else to go on."

Sam shrugged. "Feel? Nothing. Think? A whole lot. But - nothing."

"No heeby-jeebies?"

Sam shook his head. "If I didn't know better, I'd say this is just - just normal."

"No weird visions?"

Sam thought about this, his thin lips taut. He shook his head, then. "Dreams."

"What?"

"Dreams. I haven't had them before. They might mean something. They might not. I'm not a soothsayer. I don't know."

"What kind of dreams?" Dean asked, pulling himself up to sit on the pool table.

"A door. Everything else is white. Not like a white room. Just flat white. It's - still. Quiet. Like I can go back through it, but I choose not to, because I know better. And I'm safe, as long as I stay where I'm at." He shook his head, laughing. "And it's a fucking creepy door, man."

"Haunted house creepy?"

"Not the half of it."

"Door to Hell creepy?"

"Not quite."

"Hm."

"Yeah."

Outside, the wind blew. Alphonse lay on the grass, letting the dogs maul him with licks and frantically wagging tails. He wrestled with them, and Sam watched him, thirteen and not, half-wet and bright in the sun. "A few more hours." Sam whispered, and Dean just shrugged, rolling the eight ball from corner to corner, diagonal.

* * *

"Dinner is ready." Al called through their room door. "You're welcome to join us, if you'd like."

Dean half-sat up, scowling at the door. "I'll just wait for your brother if it's all the same."

"Sam?"

"Yeah, same, Dean and I have things to discuss."

"Okay." Al said, clearly unconvinced. He hedged - they could hear his footsteps, soft in slippers. "I'll leave some in the fridge if you're hungry later."

The boy was practically holding them hostage and leaving them leftovers. Odd. Odd, odd, odd. He finally left, the tell-tale clip-clap of dog nails following him.

"Anything?"

"Activity. In Louisiana. Cicadas, crop failures - get this, water contamination. Red algae. In the water system."

Sam hissed through his teeth. "Nile river turned to blood. Biblical plague?"

"Fuckers are getting creative, huh?" Dean grinned, a two-dimensional charicature.

"Where in Louisiana?"

"New Orleans herself."

"Ouch." Sam shook his head, idly tapping at the laptop's keyboard to keep it from going to sleep. "They really know how to pick a place. What's Bobby got to say?"

"Same old shit - scout out, analyze the fuck out of the whole shit." Dean shrugged, tabbing through the text messages on his cell phone. He grinned. "Remember the chick from the Coffee Bazar?"

"Dean, as your brother, I refuse to let you hook up with someone you met at the Coffee Bazaar."

"Why?"

"It's called 'the Coffee Bazaar'!"

"I'm not in a position to be picky, Sammy." Dean kicked off one of the many pillows, letting them scatter over the floor. "I wasn't drunk and she was pretty. Which means she's, you know, not a dog."

"So you plan on hooking up in Edward Elric's place? That's so - " Sam frowned. "That's so fucking gross, man."

"No. On the way to Mardi Gras." Dean said, fingers scooting over his cell's keypad. "This texting shit's tedious - aww, crap -"

"-There's one problem."

"What?"

"Alphonse."

Dean scoffed, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Kid's skinny as a rail, Sam. Just lock him in a closet."

* * *

"_'Skinny as a rail, just lock him in a closet.'_" Sam mimicked in a very whiney impression of Dean's casual tone. As well as he could, anyway, face planted in the hallway runner and all.

Dean, his cheek digging into Sam's shoulderblade, flexed his jaw and shook his head to clear the familiar fuzz of one knock too hard to the temple. "Shit."

"I told you." Alphonse said with just the tiniest hint of breathlessness. He dug his bony little knee into the small of Dean's back, forcing him down and, by extension, Sam under him. Dean thrashed like a fish. Sam began to inch his way out from under. Alphonse did something weird and quick, somehow twisting Dean's arm and Sam's arm around each other and into the same lock, adding his weight to the small of Dean's back so that any single fucking movement was painful. "I told you, I told you, I told you. You really can't leave."

"This is BULLSHIT." Dean snarled.

"It's only for a few more hours." Al said, exasperated.

"I don't mean that!" Dean thrashed again, and Al leaned in. "I cannot possibly get my ass handed to me by a KID."

"I'm sorry if I hurt your masculinity, Dean." Al said, in all seriousness. "I've taken on bigger things than you when I was really thirteen, plus give ninety years to refine it. Don't worry." He patted Dean's head in a playful gesture, small but freakishly strong hand still holding his and Sam's wrists between his fingers.

In the kitchen, the distinct crack-hiss-wheeze of Noa's laughter crept through the dead stillness. Al frowned down at them, and they tried their damned best to level equal glares at him.

"Fucking bullshit. Sam, this does not leave this house!"

"What?"

"No one knows I got the shit beat out of me by a fucking prettyboy."

"I'm glad to hear that." Al said, cheerfully.

"What?" They both hissed.

"It means I'm doing something right." Al smiled, a secretive but entirely honest, pleased smile. "My partner likes the feminine look." He blinked back at their rather stunned faces. "Oh, you really think I've always been this girlish?" He just shook his head, laughing.

Suddenly, a chaotic ruckus of barking dogs and jingling keys rang through the house. Hinges creaked, and a rough, almost sultry voice drifted, edged in irritation. "What the hell?"

A positively ethereal smile lit Al's face, then, and he wiggled in his seat on them with an eager sort of happiness. "Brother, you're home!"

"Should I have waited a couple more hours? Or maybe longer. There are two of them, anyway." The man lifted a gloved hand and whipped a slender pair of eyeglasses off his elegantly-shaped nose, gold eyes positively beastial and very, very possessive.

Al pouted and whined, a weedling, almost coddling tone. "It's not like that and you know it."

Dean felt the toe of a boot prod his shoe. "Who the fuck are they, then?" Edward asked.

"They would like your little brother to unhand us." Sam hissed into the carpet.

"Hey, quick question." Dean said around carpet fibers. "Am I the only one who's seriously uncomfortable?"

"I wasn't talking to them, now was I?" Ed snapped. "Al?"

"Guess so." Dean groaned, the strain on his shoulder starting to throb something awful.

"They came here looking for you. I'll tell you all about it later, you know, but they know. And they tried to leave. Which is why I need to sit on them, now."

Ed sighed. "I leave you alone for two weeks -"

"The timing isn't my fault!"

"Where's Noa?"

"Kitchen - probably finishing my tea." Al sulked.

"Hold them. I'll be right back."

* * *

"Edward." Noa spoke, softly. Sure enough, she had Al's ridiculous cat-shape tea mug between her hands, half-finished.

"Hey." He smiled, circled the table to wrap his arm around her stooped shoulders, careful of the weight of the automail. He kissed her soft cheek.

"Welcome home." She whispered.

"Glad to be back." He smiled into her hair. It smelled of lavender, some dumb organic shit Al bought from Whole Foods. "Al's been a handful, hasn't he?"

"I'm glad to have him here." She took a deep, wheezing breath. "We've missed you."

"Mm. Tired?"

"A little."

"Come on, then." He toed off the stops to the wheelchair and gently wheeled her to the lift. They had a lift installed, when Noa's strength began to ebb. It was a simple thing, hissing softly its acent to the second floor.

Edward was always gentle, frank and sure in the way he held her. Helped her, steadied her feet, tucked the blankets around her chin. He double and triple-checked the call button on her bedside table. From the hallway, Al yelled "It's working!" and Noa laughed.

"What?" He asked, playfully, as he sat and gently smoothed her hair over her pillow.

"He's so loud for someone so little." She said, with a small smile on her face. Ed could only smile in return. No one was sure when, exactly, Noa had come to love Alphonse as much as Ed did.

"Took after me, he did." Ed's brow furrowed. "Wait -"

Noa laughed, the thin skin of her throat stretched near-translucent as her head fell back into the pillows. It took a while for her to regain her breath. "Mm. He's not as muscular as you." She smirked, a deviousness she'd learned when she was twenty-five and had spent enough company with them. "Or as handsome."

Ed rolled his eyes, as he often did, and kissed her thin lips. "He's his own."

"He is. Speaking of which." Noa sat up, fumbling for the TV remote. "He's a little tease."

"Oh?" Ed's eyebrows shot up.

"What do I see when I wake up? Him, curled up, stark naked beside me. I think he's forgotten I'm old."

"You're not that old."

"Old enough."

"Should I tell him -"

"I may be too old to do much of anything about it, Edward." She said, in false annoyance. "But I'm not entirely blind yet. I'd rather enjoy it while I can."

"Much of anything?" Ed blinked, his eyes wide.

She just smirked. "Ask Alphonse."

Ed sighed through his teeth, chipped and sharp from many battles. It was a fascismile of humor.

"A handsome husband and a beautiful lover, mine until I die. What girl could ask for more?"

"Still. I worry." Ed sighed, gently entwining his strong, broad fingers into her birdlike ones. Matching rings, tarnished on Ed's hand. Behind him, the blue glow of the television came on, a talking head news anchor, the low, static sound of electronic voice.

"Don't." Noa said, firmly, even in her rasp of a voice. "I'm happy he's here. I'm happy with this." She squeezed his hand, and there was a smile on her face, her teeth thin and yellow. "Don't go on too many travels. Not many."

"Noa." Ed's jaw tensed.

She patted his hand, then. His eyes were soft, for once. He hadn't aged - in that respect, in some ways, he was still a child. "You have other things to worry about. Two other things."

"Right." Ed sighed. "Never a dull moment."

"Don't pout like that." She admonished. "You'll need that absinthe for this one."

"Right, right." He fussed with the blankets under her chin, a habit he'd picked up from Al. "That does not sound reassuring at all." He ushered the cats out, as he'd always done. Pulled the covers of the birdcage halfway off, so the dawny yellow of Noa's canaries could keep with her more peaceful company than either himself or his brother.

He kissed her before he left, and she was already half-asleep. "Love you." He whispered, and she smiled. Her lips formed the words, but her voice had been stretched, and lay, tired, with her.

* * *

"Let them up."

Like some obedient dog, Al released them. He sighed a delicate little sigh, righted his shirt and brushed off his trousers. Dean and Sam collapsed onto the floor with twin groans, stretching and shaking feeling back into bruised limbs.

"Living room."

"Look here." Dean braced himself against the hallway wall as he stood, brow furrowed and temper ticking at his jaw. "I don't know what the fuck is going on -"

"Living room, or leave." Ed stated, plainly, and went to his luggage. Al smiled, then, and trotted after him, high voice nagging 'Did you get it? Did you?'

"Yeah, yeah, got it. Got a lot of stuff you'd like." Ed looked at a bottle of wine. "Well, this one's mine. Here." He tossed a green bottle to his brother, who caught it in deft hands and smiled widely at the label. "Some cheese, chocolates, something for your collection -"

"Oh?" Al peered over his brother's shoulder, nestling his chin into the crook of Ed's neck. "It's beautiful, brother."

"Yeah, some hobo artist. Crazy as fuck, but he's good."

"I do love it." Al whispered, kissed his neck, held the small painting in two hands and admired it with almost raptured facination. "I think it'll be good in the garden. I'll have to have it framed properly -"

"Told you." Dean's voice was low and thick, rolling his shoulder to gain feeling back into it.

Sam's eyes darted, from Alphonse and Edward to Dean, and then again. "Did he just -"

"Yep."

"So I'm not -"

"Nope."

"Ew." And Dean nodded his agreement.

"Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ, you step into every gay stereotype of each goddamn decade." Ed continued to grumble, and ventured to the kitchen. There, cabinets banged, glasses clinked. Al stuck his tongue out childishly at Ed's back. In the living room, he propped the small painting onto a shelf cluttered with old books. "I collect paintings. Unknown artists. They're much more interesting." He said, smiling a little as he stepped back to observe it.

Dean ran blunt fingers through his hair. "That's precious."

Ed threw himself, haphazard, into a chair by the fireplace. He sighed, a rude thing, impatient, uncultured. "So why am I talking to you?"

Al set the single wine glass on the coffee table. Uncorked the bottle, poured the wine.

Dean looked at the wine, and the glass. He didn't miss the way Al's fingers, small and delicate, slid up the narrow neck of the bottle once the glass was half-full. Al's head, turned, a smile, eyes only for Ed. Dean cleared his throat, and scooted against the armrest, away from Sam. "You haven't aged."

"No shit." The words had no venom. Ed took the glass from Al's hands. It was almost a surprise when Al didn't freakin' bow or something, so damn subservient.

"How?"

"Eating virgins." Ed smiled, all flashy teeth, some crooked, pointed canines.

Al looked away, at his painting. "Maybe once." He muttered, then laughed when Ed's fingers wormed into his armpits.

Al hitched a soft little gasp, the breath from his lips ruffling his older brother's hair. Ed's fingers dug into Al's chest and waist deeply, in a way that had to hurt, and Al only laughed.

Dean cleared his throat, a pointed, irritated sound. Then shot Sam a halfhearted glare, bags under his eyes, when Sam began to speak. "Sir, we would like to get out of your hair as soon as possible, so -"

"Really?" Al chirped, his high voice a sing-song. His footsteps bare over the cold hardwood floors. He leaned over, then, hands resting on the armrest. Eyes level with Sam's. "Then why not tell us what you did?" He said with flushed lips and a breathless voice.

"I don't know." Sam, his large hands, curled into fists on his knees. His lips set, refusing to back down to that odd, coy agressiveness.

"Oh?"

"I was - " Sam struggled, glanced to Dean.

Dean sighed, scrubbing his rough palms over his stubble-rough face. "He was dead." Bravado gone, factual and bland spoken.

Al stepped back, practically skittering to the harbor of his brother's side. "Explain."

* * *

By the time their patchwork, convoluted tale was done, Al was sitting at his brother's feet, hunched over, pensieve and quiet. Ed was flipping the slender stem of the wine glass between his fingers, like an oversized coin. It was quite some time, the minute and hour hands of the grandfather clock shifting circular. An odd monologue, rushed through in Dean's voice, backtracked in Sam's, odd little half inside-joke laughs peppering Hell.

"...You're our best lead." Dean finished, lamely. The quiet, disconcerting.

Sam rolled his shoulders, his back aching, his elbows on his knees, his fingers entwined at the knuckles. He glanced from one Elric to the other.

Then, suddenly, Ed laughed.

Ed laughed until he couldn't breathe, slapping his thigh, the glass dropped and cracked, rolling along the floor. Al squinted, dissaprovingly, but didn't say much.

"I thought we fucked up." Ed laughed, coughed, and laughed again. "Holy shit, I thought WE fucked up -"

"-Brother." Al said, softly.

"What? At least we didn't 'unleash Hell on earth' and have a part to play in the impending apocalypse." Ed snickered, leaning into the armrest of his chair. Al glanced at them, puppy-dog, and apologetic. Suddenly Ed righted himself, a frown deeply etched on his lips, usurping the giddily youthful display of before. "You expect me to believe this shit?"

Dean smiled, laughed, not quite a laugh. A sarcastic quirk of his lips, sideways, charming. "Yeah, far-fetched, isn't it?" He shook his head, laughing. "Pretty fucking unbelievable. Kind of like not aging for one hundred years?"

Al elbowed his brother's leg. "He has a point, brother." He said, softly.

"Please." Ed spoke, boldly, bristling, intimidating despite his size. "You expect me to believe this shit? Fairy-tales and nightmares - Dark Ages mumbo-jumbo?" He leaned over, and rapped his knuckles mockingly on the coffee table. It was a startlingly bold sound through the gloves. "I'm a scientist, _kids_, not a fucking pastor. Why not pray to God?" And he mocked 'God', bitterly.

Dean sneered. Just as bitter, he said - "I can't talk to God. Can't hear him. Can't see him. Tell you what, though - " He leaned forward, his elbows digging into the knees of his oil-stained jeans, and looked Ed square in the eye. " - That fuckin' demon? I sure as hell heard her. Saw her. Every one of them."

Sam said nothing. Al watched him, and spoke, quietly. "The sins would be considered demons." Al picked at the fray of his sweater. "The gate - what? Purgatory? Hell? The Thule Society thought I was a demon, remember, Brother?" He sighed, his brow furrowed. "Parallels, Brother. Transmutation there, Magic here, science here, alchemy there, Homunculus there, Demon here? Dante possessed Lyra. I possessed the armor. It isn't so impossible."

"You're not a demon."

"Parallels don't have to be exact." Al shrugged, glancing, against his will, at a picture on the mantle. Him but pale, handsome where Al was beautiful.

"Bullshit."

Complacently, Al stood, and took his brother's hand. "You're just tired and grumpy. Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

Al pulled him to his feet. "You need sleep. You need time to think."

"I need these two out of my house." Ed snarled.

"I believe them. So does Noa. Didn't she tell you?"

"Noa isn't your fucking mom, Al, stop playing us against each other!"

"I am not. She does believe them. Ask her tomorrow morning."

"If you think I have time - "

"We have a lot of time." Al said, patiently.

"As if I can sleep with them in my house - "

"I'll help you." Al whispered, moving in promise, leading his brother - his brother - up the stairs. The lilting way of Al's voice faded between the shadows of the hallway. A cat, one of many, with bright blue eyes, wound its way with sensual grace between and around Sam's ankles, and Dean's ankles. Dean hit the coffee table with the heel of his boot in frustration, and Sam watched the cat look at Dean with what could be considered dissapproval.

* * *

Sam found him outside in the pale sun of AM. Walked to his side, determination making his eyes flint and steel. His hands, jammed into his pockets, where the seam carved a red line into his knuckles. Laundry hung all along clotheslines, white shirts and white sheets, water dripping onto his hair and shoulders.

"I bet you're used to handwashing things." Al said, around a clothespin in his mouth.

"Why?"

"You don't have a home with a washer or a dryer." Al stood on tiptoes, clipped the pin. The wind pulled the clotheslines taut. The sheets whipped, snapped, sharp and wet.

Sam shrugged. "Bathtub. Laundromat."

"Mm. I remember."

"You weren't there." Sam reached into the plastic basin. Shook out a pillowcase. Soapy fingers on wooden pins.

"Maybe I was, once." Al wiped his hair from his face with the less-soapy backs of his hands. "I bet you've been places we've gone to fifty years ago."

"Fifty?"

Al shrugged. Tugged wrinkles out of fabric. "Or twenty. Or sixty."

"I wouldn't be surprised." Sam said, warily.

"Brother is researching. Trying to figure something out. It's how he works." Al said, softly, and traced the crisp collar of a grey dress shirt. "Dean?"

"Still asleep. Spent all night bitching. He believes us?"

"I convinced him to at least look into it."

Sam nodded his thanks. Convinced. Right.

"Thanks for helping me." Al favored him with a smile. "At this rate, I'll have breakfast ready by the time Brother realizes other things exist and Dean wakes up."

"I can help." Sam said, quickly. "I'm not much of a cook - "

"This is enough." Al said, firmly. He jerked at the hems and sleeves of a shirt, unwrinkling it before it dried. "Thank you. I know my brother's being difficult." Al stopped, and stepped back, unclipping a pin from his sleeve. "You're looking at me strange. Why?"

"You're - " Too domestic. Odd. Subservient. You've just fucked your brother and now I can't look mine in the eye. He cleared his throat. "You do all the housework here, don't you?"

"Mm." Al nodded.

"Why?"

"I don't want a maid." Al said. "They snoop. Noa's old. Brother - he gets caught up in his mind a lot. He can't clean worth shit." Al shrugged. "I'm happy. It makes me happy."

"I think I'd punch Dean." Sam muttered. Al frowned at him, a thoughtful pout.

"This reminds me of home." Al said, softly. "Back there, then, no dryers. I think that's why I do it like this."

"Old habits?"

"Yep." Al smiled.

"I guess he's lucky you're around." Sam said, quietly.

"You're trying to be polite. I appreciate that." Al said, in honesty. "Dean is too."

Sam just shook his head. "He's only here because he's humoring me."

Al curled his fingers on the clothesline, half-hanging off of it. "If he dies for you?"

"It won't happen." Sam said, quickly, habitually, before the sound of cars and dogs and people up and down the street could fill in a pause between him and Al.

"It can."

"I'll bring him back."

"Can you?"

"We told you - "

"I know it's possible." Al said, softly. "But _can you_?"

Sam narrowed his eyes. "And that means - ?"

Al rested his cheek against the sheets, the wet of it molding into the shape of his face. "If he dies for you, and you bring him back."

"It worked. Unless there's a catch. A toll."

"Maybe I'm wrong." Al said, smiling. Sam could have sworn it was fond. "I don't think you two will live exceptionally long, anyway. That's good."

"Is it?" Sam said, laughing.The clothing wet everything down to white and snatches of vibrant green lawn.

Al smiled. It was sad. Content. "If he dies for you, and he's brought back - nothing's gonna be the same."

Sam swallowed, thickly. Hooked his fingers onto the clothesline, a pace, two, away from Al's. Bigger. Calouses where the grip of his gun met his palm.

"Did you think about that?"

"It doesn't matter." Sam said, fiercely.

"You didn't."

"No. I just won't let him die. Not for me."

"Some things of you will die for him." Al said, softly.

"Like - ?"

"I don't think you'll be us." Al whispered. There was a strange light, a gloss and wet in his eyes as he looked at him. Really, really looked at him. Briskly, he turned and began to empty the leftover water of the basin into the grass.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Al stood, and looked at him. "I didn't even like men." He whispered, softly. "Not at first. It happens. In bits and pieces."

"People change." Sam said, fingers clenching around the clothesline.

"Noa said you were almost engaged, once."

Sam set his jaw. Inhaled a shaking breath. "I'll help with breakfast."

* * *

Dean stumbled down the stairs, hair askew, flat on the side where he lay on his pillow. "Eggs." He stated, bluntly. He shook his head, then, took the coffee someone offered him, and shook his head again.

Sam was pouring coffee. Five cups. Odd little mismatched mugs. Al hovered over the stove. The sunlight gleamed through the curtains, plain curtains. A gold coin hung from the doorknob leading out to the patio.

Dean sat heavily at the table, drank his coffee, and said - "This is creepily domestic."

"Here. Eggs." Al scraped them onto each plate. The yolk broke, yellow and thick. While Dean ate, Al frowned at his hair and ran his fingers through it.

"Whoa, what? Hey!" Dean leaned away, almost manic in the wide-eyed glare he gave the boy.

"Your hair looks stupid." Al said, bluntly, and tried to smooth it down with no gentleness with the flat of his palm.

"So does yours." Dean snipped.

Sam laughed into the rim of his coffee.

Ed stumbled down the stairs, a book open in the flat of his palm. An old journal, by the looks of things. Handwritten, faded pages. Worn leather spine.

"Morning, Brother." Al chirped. "I'm glad you at least remembered a robe." He stirred syrup into a mug of coffee. "Did you remember your boxers?"

Ed stopped, made an odd move as if considering to go back to his room, then shrugged.

Sam's fingers twitched above his fork, his jaw set and he shifted his weight and bulk around. Dean half-smiled and rubbed his bedhead into something (hopefully) more presentable, half-smiled and nothing else because Sam gave him that 'look' and quelled anything he had to say.

Ed looped an arm around Al's waist, and kissed his brother's neck, humming softly, a gentle bite that made Al laugh. His eyes never left the pages. "I can't find a correlation." He said, huskily, into the mess of his little brother's hair.

"I don't think you will." Al sighed, and slid a mug of coffee into Ed's hand and put a piece of toast to his mouth. Ed ate mechanically. "Dad was an Alchemist. He didn't have much time to study this world's sciences in full, did he?"

"He knew more about the Thule Society than most."

"You said yourself. Sheer, dumb luck."

"Maybe not. How'd they know to use Envy?"

"Parallels." Al sing-songed as he set breakfast potatoes out on a skillet. Better than a diner any day.

"One is All, All is One."

"Cycle of Life. Animism?"

Over Al's voice and Ed's grumbling, Dean shook the tobasco bottle vigorously over his potatoes. Al looked at him and wrinkled his nose in disgust, and Dean shook the bottle with even more relish.

Ed frowned, a sad little element. "Assessment, deconstruction and reconstruction."

"Christian rebirth. Baptism. Baptism through fire. The crucifixion?"

"No linear, solid pantheon though." Ed turned his focus to them, Sam and Dean, as they focused with commendable will on their respective breakfasts. "Does it matter? What pantheon or religion these demons come from?"

"Christian exorcisms - latin, holy water, crucifixes, Solomon's symbols, shields and seals." Sam sighed. "But, there are other hunters who use Hoodoo. In Japan, Buddhism and Shinto rites and rituals. Sometimes we use a pentacle to protect ourselves while we use a latin Catholic exorcism. There's no set-in-stone way."

"God isn't real." Ed spoke, bluntly. "Can't see how you can use Christian rituals without faith."

"Exactly." Dean said.

"I can't find a correlation." Ed sighed, and tossed the journal away. There were circles in the open pages. Geometric shapes.

"It was never supposed to work to begin with, Brother."

(End Chapter One)


	2. Chapter 2

The Audience With Forever – Chapter 2

Notes: Where are the brakes on this thing, I ask? Seems that there are none! Still, thanks for your very kind reviews and I do hope someone continues to enjoy this odd story o' mine. Also, there is Elricest smut in this chapter.

* * *

"Okay, here we go!" Al chirped, the very top of his head, the odd strand of hair that stuck up at a strange angle similar to his brother's, all that could be seen of him behind the canvas bags. He set them down at the kitchen table, letting little post-it notes flutter and the epidermis-thin pages of their father's journals rustle and hiss. "Beer, chips - hey, Noa, I got some chocolates for you!"

"She has to watch her sugar intake." Edward didn't look up from his notes and blindly reached for the bag of chips.

"And she does!" Al peeled off the gold wrapper. Noa smirked, her eyes alight, warm and mischievous, like her youth.

"Finally." Dean tossed Sam a bottle.

"And that is why I had to fight with the cashier." Al wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving melted chocolate all along the pockets.

"Can't blame the guy." Sam took a sip. Cold. Perfect. "Fake ID?"

Noa motioned Al closer, and closer, and he thread his small fingers through her grey hair as she whispered into his ear. She touched his bare shoulders with some degree of familiarity.

"Ah, I see." He hummed as he turned away, then suddenly planted his palms on the table and leaned playfully between Sam and Dean. "Then again, Sam, you would know all about fake IDs, wouldn't you?" He smiled cheekily, and turned that cheeky smile to Dean, and went back about to putting away groceries.

Sam could only have it in him to laugh, dimples clear in the buttery sunlight of the kitchen, against his new-shaven face. He laughed, freely, at the quirk of Dean's eyebrows and his brother's resolution to focus on a well-deserved beer.

"Stop flirting with them and help me." Ed ground out between his teeth, shoving a stack of papers at Al's general direction.

"I am NOT - really, Brother, you are horribly unreasonable at times." Al said, snappily, as he sat himself in a chair cross-legged and began to scan the notes, the typical softness of his voice going high, and a distinct taste of an English accent filtering through mostly American pronounciations. "Just because you have all the social graces and interpersonal skills of silica nitrate does not mean anyone else who happens to talk to their guests wants to-mmph!"

Ed uncurled his fingers from Al's collar and playfully pushed his brother back onto the chair. Al's lips still stained in an almost innocent flush from the harsh and abrasive kiss Edward had given him, soft, utterly pliant adoration gentling his eyes in the face of Edward's mischivious, brash grin.

Dean put the bottle to his lips and tilted his head back, swanlike, and emptied the remaining beer in one powerful swing. With a 'clunk' amidst the rustling of paper, he set it down and reached across Sam for a second bottle. "I need this." He said, bluntly. Sam handed the bottle over, without a word, unsure of where to look.

"Emerald Tab-" Ed started to say.

"What time is it?" Al said, suddenly.

"Check out line four -"

"What time is it?"

Dean flicked the old leather cuff of his jacket off his watch. "Nine twenty-seven."

"SHIT!" Al shot right up from his chair as if he'd been burned. "I mean, oh, darnit -"

"Alphonse, pay attention. Ow - " Ed snarled in pain when Al grabbed him by his ponytail and jerked his head back to look up and away from his notes.

"Caltech." Was all Al said, and Ed's eyes widened.

"Shit. Shit! Al, what time is it?" Ed nearly knocked his chair over in his rush, his footsteps heavy on the staircase.

"Nine twenty-seven!" Dean yelled up after him, and shrugged at Sam's questioning look.

There was a crash and a yelp, and then more running.

"At least put on deodorant!" Al yelled upstairs from somewhere in the livingroom.

"Where the fuck is my shirt?" Ed roared, the man sure had a pair of lungs if he could be heard from the second floor.

There was a whirlwind of Al through the kitchen and the french doors that lead to the laundry room, some muttering, socks flew from the doorway and landed on the table, a pair of clean boxers sliding across the kitchen floor, only to be snatched up by a playful dog. Noa complacently nibbled a piece of chocolate, and lifted, clumsily, her tea mug to her lips.

"Here! In the laundry room! I'm ironing it!"

"Fuck ironing." Ed's footsteps thudded unevenly as he hastily decended the stairs, fumbling with his belt, neatly stepping over a kitten as if it was all old hat. "Where is it?"

"Here, here, oh, Guinevere, scoot!" Al gently toed said kitten away as he held open his brother's shirt. Ed slid one arm through, and Dean stared, mouth agape, Sam a mirror of confused disbelief.

It wasn't the scars covering Ed's chest, spread over and twisting his skin like disease. They wouldn't be hunters worth their salt if that was it.

The sunlight skittered and gleamed off the smooth, finely-crafted metal, into the crevices where wire, blue and yellow and red, twined, hidden, deep beneath the plates formed in a rough mimic of a human arm. Edward ended at his ribs and the slope of his shoulders, over where his right shoulderblade should be, the skin against metal tough and hard, almost plastic.

"It's like the fucking Terminator."

Ed looked up and glared from where he was struggling with his shirt buttons, and Al did the same from where he was finishing the last securement of Ed's tie.

"It's rude to comment on people's appearance, you know." Al said, snottily, as he finished Ed's tie and unkindly slapped Ed's hands away to finish his buttons himself. A jacket came after, and a suitcase, Al ushering Ed out the door with the reminder to 'drive carefully, tickets are expensive!'

From the open window of the sleek, black car, Ed yelled "Love you!" and Al smiled demurely, leaned against the doorway, every image the lovesick fool, casting his brother a fond look as he watched the car pull through the wrought-iron gates.

Upon turning to the kitchen, Al looked at Dean's wide eyes, and Sam's mouth working around a bottleneck of questions. He set his hands on his hips and exhaled through his nose, a frustrated sound, round cheeks puffing comically. "Oh, bugger."

* * *

Even the sway of the trees outside seemed to still. Alphonse refused to sit down, and Sam and Dean had come to their feet, planted easily apart, as confident lions, it seemed. Al knew that posture, he held it himself, between them and Noa, who watched, unreadable.

Al finally sighed, in that little adaptation of femininity, and fixed them with a stony expression, ill-matched to his cherub face. "We can keep this little showdown as long as you want, but I'm not saying a thing until Brother gets back home."

"I am so FUCKING SICK OF THIS." Dean finally roared. "Brother this, Brother that, can you do a single goddamn thing without -"

"Dean." Sam hissed.

"As a matter of fact, no." Al said, a waver in his unbroken voice, a tick at the corner of his lips. "I trust his judgement."

"Oh, well that's just cute." Dean mocked, pacing, stepping on scattered notes and laundry strewn over the terra-cotta tile. "We're WASTING our goddamn time here, Sam! Clearly, immortality has made this 'Professor Elric' INSANE and his little bitchboy here ain't doing us no favors -"

"Dean, that's enough." Sam said, firmly, stepping in front of his brother to intercept his agitated, almost caged pacing. He knew that look, that look with too much green and white in his eyes, that part of it where Dean was likely to say something utterly hairbrained and compulsive and blow it all to shit.

"We are running out of time, Sammy." Dean made himself broad and strong in the cross of his arms and the fray of his hair between his blunt fingers as he scratched at his scalp, frustration coloring his voice unpredictable. "We are running out of time and I can't fucking pretend we're on a goddamn hunt much longer."

"A hunt?" Al's asked, sharply, and shifted -

"No, no, it's not what it sounds like." Sam turned on him, and smiled, open face, honest, open palms, basics of interpersonal communication, shit he'd read on at Stanford, good to know when talking circles around the courtroom, shit he already knew from watching his dad gather intel from grieving families. "I think we all need to just calm down and -"

Thing is, that shit didn't work on Alphonse, if the coquetteish tilt of the boy's hips and narrow of his eyes said anything. Hell, it didn't work on Noa, the patiently amused look she gave him bone-gratingly condescending. Didn't work on Dean either, because his brother twisted his lips into a mocking sneer and turned away, roaring into the empty livingroom, "They find out about this, that bitch, Sam, you DROP DEAD - this shit ain't worth it - tell me" Dean turned on Alphonse. "this is how it is? You bend over for your crazy-ass brother for everything, don't you?"

"DEAN!"

"What do you mean, a hunt?" Al said, clearly, his voice piercing between the extremes of Sam's appeal and roar of Dean's frustration.

"The deal - " Sam looked at his brother, his lips a thin line of frustration. " - the deal Dean made with the demon, he tries to get out of it..." He shifted his center of gravity, and lowered his voice. "...he tries to get out of it, I die. The deal's undone and I die. So we're pretending -" He looked up, to nothing, frustrated at the inability of words. " - pretending we're hunting. You."

Alphonse said nothing.

"See, there. Look, I told you the truth, right? So then -"

Al looked away from him, to Noa, and the dotty old woman looked up from flipping through a goddamn magazine to nod her verification.

"-so then I owe you something?" Al shook his head. "You came to us for help, Mr. Winchester, it's your objective to supply us with the information we will need. The equivalency of the exchange we will reciprocate is at our descretion."

"So, basically, you can tell us to FUCK OFF and DIE." Dean yelled to the wallpaper.

Al frowned at Dean's tense, broad back. "It's saddening how little you think of me, Dean." He said, quietly, his voice quite small. "I do want to help, and Brother does too, maybe we don't fit into your definition of human but I am." His fingers trembled, barely, and Sam caught it. "I am."

"Oh, really?" Dean laughed, and Sam turned away to rub his temples, the circles of their standoff dizzying.

Al turned back to the mess of a kitchen table, fingertips trailing over the valley and hills of notes and books, picking up ones with worn leather spines and faceless covers, journals. "I think..." He held the journals as if they were a lover's hand as he turned to them. "I think I can tell you about what we know is Truth."

"Speak slowly and use small words." Dean said, sarcastically.

"That's not what I meant."

"You meant without your Brother here." Sam said, surely, and Al didn't protest. He sat down, put himself at a vulnerability, and looked up at Al across the table. He saw the odd way Al stood, his elbows tucked in and his feet properly together, the gentle way he held and moved. No boy he'd seen, and fewer girls, were so dainty and careful the way he was. "Are you scared of him, Al?"

In retrospect, he'd seen very little of Edward's dynamic with Alphonse. They contradicted each other and bickered when they weren't talking on the same thought in an almost eerie telepathy. Edward snapped and snipped at Alphonse like a dog at the heels of a young lamb, and held the boy with frightening strength, the shape of his fingertips clear on the skin of Al's arms. Still, Al only smiled.

Smiled at Sam and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "No, I'm not scared of him."

"Well." Dean only sat when Al sat, resting his elbows on his knees, his hair askew in every direction from agitated gestures, his voice weary. "You gotta see it the way we do."

"I am at a loss when he isn't here." Al said, easily, and undid a bone and leather clasp on one of the journals. "It's not that I fear him, it's that he is the other half of the way I think, and I'm unsure in how to approach this without him." He looked up at them, and smiled a little. "You two are, after all, the only ones we've decided to help in this particular respect. I'm not at all sure how to go about this, you understand."

"I see."

"I know he's brash and rude, believe me." Al neatly straightened the notes and pens and journals. "I know what it looks like, but he is a very good man, and he has helped a lot of people, and despite the way he snaps at me, he does love me." Al opened a journal, a journal with circles in the intricate creation of symbols and geometry, the old rust of long-forgotten words. Dean leaned closer to take a look, but not too close. Right before Al spoke, in careful words, and basic terms, he looked at Sam, and the understanding there set a rock sinking into the sudden instability of his core.

* * *

Sam let his fingers linger over a page unremarked, somewhere in the middle, ignoring the odd little illustrations of small, featureless men sketched into sperm diagrams, images he'd seen in the now two-dimensional aspect of outdated Alchemy he'd come to know. Beside them, an unfit parallel, the bold lines of a dragon in ink, with off little wings and a strong, gaping maw, the tip of his tail curving around to his mouth. The Ouroboros.

Sure, he'd seen the symbol before, in assortments of Phoenix and Fire, from China and from Medieval Europe and the Middle East, for Eterinity, for Cycle, for Death and Rebirth, and never in the well-memorized, stark, bold lines he'd seen, almost modern in their design.

It was unsettling, the ink unfaded, pages which had been tucked away from the light of lamp or sun until now. The roughness of his fingertips meant nothing against the still-smooth India ink, and he memorized carefully this last resort.

"No." Al whispered, suddenly at his side, and reached out to grab his hand and move it away. "No. Please don't think that."

"Noa good?" Dean asked, out of politeness, than anything. Her frail shoulders had drooped and drooped as if they carried the weight of the entire mistrust. She had complained, in a thin voice, when Al insisted she go to bed.

Neither heard him.

"But you said -" Sam found his voice thick, like the smoke of his apartment and his nursery.

"I tried. We tried. We created a monster."

"Dean- "

"We didn't think our mother could be, either." Al hadn't let go of his hand, small and warm and strong and holding him firmly to place, palm flat on the worn, gleaming table. "There were others. Sam, please, this has hurt enough people. There is another way."

"I know, but - say, if it doesn't work -"

"Then Dean would be better off dead." Al said, small in the starkness of his factuality. Sam inhaled sharply and looked away, his fingers curling under his palm, despite the weight of Al's hand.

"Might wanna rethink that." Dean leaned back, poising confidence in the rickety old chair he'd easily claimed as 'his' seat. "Hell eats you away. Leaves you nothing."

"Noa said your dad survived it."

"I ain't my dad. I'm not half the hunter he was." Dean replied, slowly, startled to see the slight glimmer in Al's eyes.

"Then you would be a physical demon." They had to strain to hear him. "Homunculi don't have souls either."

"It says that they wanted to become human." Sam stared at the sleek, bold shape. "This 'Lust' woman, she died helping you, didn't she? From what I can garner of the documentation -"

"Lust was a victim of a horrible war. Her grieving lover tried to bring her back, and it played a part in the decimation of nearly an entire culture." Al whispered. "She wanted to be human, but she hated and was so afraid of what it meant. We - our mother, or what was meant to be our mother, tried to kill my brother. They don't have souls. They are the face, and fragments of the original memories, perfect in every way except without a soul, they have no sanity, no grounding force in their minds. I actually felt sorry for them sometimes."

"Why?"

"Wrath was permanently a child, until he decided to die. He was always afraid of losing his mother, although he hated his real mother, and filled with such anger." He turned to look at Dean, as if in condemnation. "He may remain, physically, but there will be nothing left that means anything."

"You manage it." Sam's voice was vague, lost almost.

"I am not a homunculus." Al said, softly, in a delicate manner of soothing wounds and illness.

"You and your brother - you live forever, never age, never get sick, I presume? And you say you aren't homunculi, when they live forever too, ageless." Dean's voice rose with each word, setting cold in the hush of the table.

"We're not sure how Brother and I manage it. I know I would have killed myself before becoming one of those things."

"Life is life."

"They devour life to live." Al said. "You know the Philosopher's Stone and the Red Elixer from silly little superstitions and fantasy stories, but something capable of being so powerful needs an equally powerful force to fuel it. Human lives."

"You created a homunculus -" Sam spoke in an even tone, a familiar one, just fact and reality and none of those vague little ends that slipped between their fingers.

"We created the raw materials to form a homunculus, Sam, it's very different, and we spent five years undoing our mistake, as best it could be undone. We didn't refine Sloth into what she was. The sacrifice we had to give -"

"Edward's arm."

"In a way."

"An arm is still not a life." Sam backed up, and remembered the gaping maw of Changelings and the emptiness of innocent ghosts. "Dean -"

"I'm not, and I cannot say anymore without my Brother here." Al's eyes were wet, and he lifted his hands to hug himself, and said, softly. "I wish Noa didn't let you keep that other gun."

"What the hell are you." Sam held his gun, hidden before between his pants and his skin, warm in is hand. He couldn't find it in himself to undo the safety. Dean was at his side, glancing at the cabinet, where his gun was stashed, hidden.

"I'm human." Al said, fiercely, and looked up at him in some misunderstood, incomprehensible pride.

"We're the first you decided to help, and why? So you can devour our lives? Or offer them to your crazy brother?"

"I knew I shouldn't have said anything until Brother came home!" Al cried, seemingly unpreturbed about the gun, looking beseechingly to the wooden front door. "I wanted to help you because my brother died to save my life too!" Al set his lips and looked aside. "Do you know how rare that is? How horrible most people are? Their loved ones are sick with cancer, or injured and braindead, dying, and there are - you know there are! - ways to bring them back, but people just die because people just refuse to move on and keep walking and instead sit and grieve! That's normal, isn't it? That is the cycle, but - but the ones who come knocking at our doorstep? The ones who grovel to my Brother, don't even look at Noa, much less speak to her, as if she's some lesser being because she's old, they're the ones who find us.

"They have pictures of their children in the wallets they carry all their goddamn money in, money they have the gaul to put on MY kitchen table, and they never say a word about them! Each and every one!" Al stopped, panting harshly, wiping fiercely at the tears in his eyes he refused to outright shed. "But you, you didn't come here with ego, or money, or blackmail. That's why I want to help."

"Spirits lie." Sam's voice wavered, the gun dipped down, just a little off-mark. "I'm sorry, Alphonse, but demons lie, and so do spirits."

"Exorcise me, then." Al lifted his chin and straightened his spine, righting the ferocity of his previous words. "Make me drink holy water, make me breathe sage smoke, have me cross a line of salt."

"Dean."

From his coat pocket he took that small bottle of holy water, shook it, and all Alphonse did was blink at it landed on his face and clung to his hair. The sage smoke made his eyes water, made him cough, but he didn't flicker or flee out of the bluish curls and earthen smell. His bare feet easily stepped over the carefully-erected salt threshhold, and his open, honest eyes looked up at Sam, the gun set squarely between them.

"I - Dean."

"I don't know either. Fuck."

"I don't have the mark of the Ouroboros." Al whispered, and Sam remembered the crude shapes of men and women with rough, red circles where the mark was located on them. Above the heart, on a woman's breast, in the palm of a hand, on a thigh, in pencil and ink and plain, red marker -

"Shit." Sam's eyes narrowed over the gun, and all the gentle little taunting smiles and hazy wish-wash of Alphonse's odd little trail-manner of speaking disappeared into those wide, childlike grey eyes. He worked his teeth, letting them creak reassuringly in his mouth, set his jaw, his nostrils flared. "Dean, hold this."

"Jesus, Sam -" Dean took the gun, and stepped into Sam's place, easy like rainwater.

"You really will do anything for him." Al brought his hands to the collar of his own shirt. Looked up at him through his eyelashes, in a manner which screamed sensuality, unsettled Sam, made Dean's grip white on the gun. Al stepped away, a light little side-step, and Dean followed sharply. "I won't make you do this, though."

"Why?"

Al blushed, red at his cheeks, as his pajama pants pooled around his feet, and he kicked them off, picking at the buttons of his shirt. "I don't have the same conniptions about nudity as others do." One bare shoulder, then another, and a sudden expanse of skin as the shirt fell about his waist. Sam wished he could reflect the coldness in Dean's stoic set of face.

Al kept his hands demurely in front of him, the shirt sleeves looped around his wrists, gathered in his hands, letting it climb his waist and display the smooth and supple skin of his hips and thighs. Knees together, elbows tucked in, Alphonse's body was far from the gangly, half-child half-man youth common for his face. Feminine, masculine, muscular and soft, full thighs and hips and a small waist and muscle making itself known whenever he so much as shifted his weight. He watched Sam, carefully, as Sam circled him, once, twice. He laughed when he sat on a chair and Sam grabbed his foot to look at the sole, a childlike giggle in irony. Spread his legs to show the milky inner skin of his thighs, umarked save for a pale, brown mole close between his legs where his shirt barely kept some sense of modesty.

'And this is what Edward wants.' Sam thought, as he circled to Al's back, unsure why he thought that, why he spent the better part of the last two days not thinking anything of it. Al's skin was soft and supple beneath his fingertips. His hair long and fine, entangling with his fingers as he pushed it aside.

"What's this?"

Immediately, Dean lifted the gun, and undid the safety. The metallic click rang louder than it should have.

"It's my brother's mark." Al reached up to touch the criss-crossing rough-hewn lines, his back having arched just a little when Sam carelessly touched over the length of it, the shirt slipping low over his thighs. "It's part of him saving me. It's nothing like the Ouroboros, is it?" Al turned to look at Sam over his shoulder, smiling, proudly, and whispered. "When he first drew it, he did in his own blood, and I've been his ever since."

"Is that part of it? Cheating death?"

"I'm not sure."

Al held still, and let Sam look. The shape of a crude child's finger drawing eternity in his own blood.

Sam let Al's hair fall back into place. "Get dressed."

"Oh." Al sighed, gratefully, and began to button up his shirt again. "I'm glad this can be resolved." He stood, and the sheer cotton clung to his thighs. "I'm not going to say anything else, though."

* * *

Ed's glasses clattered amidst the coffee cups and beer bottles and pens on the table. He loosened his tie, letting it draped, half-knotted, over his shoulders, his eyes dark at the midnight hour. "It's like chasing a retarded chipmunk."

Al stood behind him, his hands warm through Ed's wrinkled dress shirt, slowly circling his brother's shoulders, the hard lines of Ed's neck and chest as he carelessly undid the tie and let it fall to the floor. "Retarded chipmunk?"

His brother waved a dismissive hand. "Yeah, sure, why not? Mm - geeze, Al." Still, he leaned forward to give Al's strong hands room to sooth his back, tilting his head aside to let Al rub his lips and tongue against the stubble along his jaw.

"Brother." Al sing-songed, hitting that spot just beneath his right shoulderblade with the firmness of the heel of his palm, that spot which ached from the automail, hard to reach and usually ignored.

"What do you want?" Ed grunted, and wiggled into the firm touch like a dog with an itch.

"What makes you think I want something?" Al's lips traced the shell of Ed's ear.

"Instinct."

Al didn't respond, the gentle press of his lips against his brother's neck became wet, open, intimate, pressing himself firmly against Ed's back. He sighed over the distinct shape of Edward's cheekbone. The flat of his palm, hot and soft. Ed reached up with his flesh hand, his fingers rough over the bridge of Al's nose, to find his lips, wet and full.

"C'mon, fuck -" Ed hissed when Al languidly suckled on his fingers. "Alphonse -"

Al nuzzled his brother's wrist with a delicate little sigh, and leaned close to whisper into his ear. "I think I should tell you something, before Noa tattles on me."

"Oh?"

"Mm-hmm..."

"What?"

Al kissed his cheek. "Sam and Dean -"

"Oh, geeze, research, done. Right? Ghostbusters, asleep, and now -"

"Sam and Dean -" Al said over him, and bit that one place that he knew went straight to his brother's quirks. "- saw me with very little on."

Ed scowled. "Walked in on you showering?"

"Nope. Took off my clothes."

Ed started to laugh, but when Al only smiled at him, he sat upright and narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"Mm." Al lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug, regarding his brother through low eyelashes.

"Alphonse -"

"They thought I was a homonculus." Al casually reached out and tugged at a strand of his brother's hair. "I showed them I didn't have the Ouroborous."

"And couldn't you have waited for me to come home?" Ed ground out between his teeth.

"A waste of time." Al said, glossily, dismissively.

"Fuck."

Al draped himself over Ed's tense shoulders. "You know I don't want them."

"Shut the hell up, you've been flirting with BOTH of them -"

"Flirting? Maybe. It's really funny to see them try not to freak out."

Ed glared at nothing, straight ahead, his brow heavy and his hands making the worn wood of the armrests creak.

"They're not exactly my type." Al carelessly toyed with the button on his shirt. "Sam touched my blood seal."

Al gave a startled gasp as he was shoved up against the wall, pinned firmly, a hold he could easily break. He flexed his arms and tested his brother's haphazard grip and found it lacking.

"He what?" Ed had gone far past 'irritated, jealous lover' and into the same near-manic state he had when fixated, like a dog about to attack, all flashing teeth and wide, dialated eyes.

Al tilted his head back against the wall, just a little bit insolent. "He touched my blood seal. I didn't mean for him to. Your blood seal, I mean."

"Damn fucking right." Ed spat. Al ignored it, nearly trembling at the strength of that hold, near-crushing. Pushing against Ed's grip, he leaned close and kissed his brother's curled, white knuckles.

"You're hurting me." Al whispered. Ed immediately let go of him, letting his fingers rest lightly on the skin he'd bruised.

"Sorry. I -"

"It's okay."

"Alphonse, damn it." He stepped close, his hair brushing over Al's upturned face, his over-long bangs across the bridge of Al's nose. "If you want -"

"Yes?" Al looked up at him, his fingers curled into the skewed collar of Edward's shirt, swaying oddly when Ed shifted from heel to heel. He tried not to smile at the tense lines at the corner of Edward's mouth, lines he did want to kiss, the furrow of his brow he wanted to touch. He inhaled, deeply, Ed smelling of machine oil and beer and human, male musk.

"If you want to, you can." He finally said, his lips barely moving, his throat pulsing with them, adam's apple quivering, his very physique refusing to move the words. "I know you won't leave. It's not fair to you."

Ed began to grip him tightly again when Al looked up at him, silent, his breathing shallow. He pressed close and kissed his brother, soft and seemingly affectionate. "I'm going to bed. Is there anything you want?"

"Huh?"

Al gave him a look that said 'Idiot'. "Food? Drink? Help with your work?"

"No."

His brother was so cute, eyes downcast, voice soft, warm, strong hand gentle on his shoulder, voice so soft it hardly left his mouth, thin lips and rough skin Al leaned close to kiss sweetly. "Okay. Good night."

Ed could barely manage to let him go, his hands hovering at his sides even as Al stepped back and climbed the stairs without a word. He saw his brother, in a distinct sort of knowledge, fiddling with a drink he wouldn't sip anymore, sitting in an undignified slouch, sulking and not.

To his right was Noa's room, and the canaries beside her bed sung sleepily when he cracked the door open to check on her. He was careful and brief about it, Noa was a light sleeper, probably knew he was there anyway. Further down the hall he could hear Sam and Dean conversing in low voices, the hissing deep of their words filling the dark hall in half-sylables.

Their bedroom was sparse, bare-bones and comfortable, a meager step above the Amestris military barracks. The carpet, pale and soft against his feet, the walls pale with moonlight, he opened a window and the cool night air filled the picture-less and impersonal expanse of the room. He didn't turn on the lights, and thought nothing of removing his clothing, letting them slip into the hamper tucked into a corner from an inattentive hand.

As he ran the shower water, in the bathroom with plain white tiles and old brass fixtures, he saw the bruises of Edward's hands on his arms in the mirror above the sink. His breath caught, not from the cold of the open window or the stark contrast of the hot shower, and paid particular attention to the back of his neck and the ache of the darkened shapes of the skin of his arms. Soap slid over his skin and rested on his eyelashes, bubbles popping delicately over the marks of his body.

He was disappointed to see the bed empty when his shower was done.

Still, he wrinkled the smooth sheets as he climbed into bed, kicking the duvet off with his heels, keeping the sheer sheet, rolling onto his chest to open the side-table drawer and found the lubricant. Wasn't much else in that drawer, anyway.

A lot of hotels had Bibles in their bedside tables.

Al laughed to the bare walls, letting the bottle fall to the sheets, damp hair snaking to cling to the pillows. He quieted, and listened to the sporadic sound of cars in the street, the dogs barking at each other, at those walking late at night.

His knees slipped on the bedsheets as he turned onto his stomach, lifted his hips, sighed with the warm flush taking his skin, already aware of that pleasant weight at the pit of his stomach to the backs of his thighs. He reached for the bottle and wet his fingers, licked his lips as he touched the insides of his thighs, leaving them wet, and pushed his fingers between his legs. Al could practically feel his brother's hot tongue and sharp teeth against his skin.

He tilted his hips up and pushed deeper, adding one finger, then another, opening himself with just a little pain that set the word 'Brother' at his lips.

Suddenly the bed dipped. Al opened his eyes enough to make out Ed's hazy image. Finally, his brother's hands on him, the flat of his flesh hand sliding over his back.

"Brother -" He pushed against the matress, about to sit up, lean back, press close. Edward's hand on his back became firm, and pressed him down. Al gasped at the skinwarmed slickness of the sheets against his cheek and nipples, pushed back when he felt metal and flesh cup his ass, let his fingers slowly slide from inside him.

Another firm hand, between his legs, trapping his wrist there and firmly guiding his fingers back into himself, deeper and deeper to the knuckles. He exhaled, sharply, his hair skating across his lips and cheek. Ed slowly pulled at his wrist, and pushed Al's own hand close to his body again, guiding him, his automail hand pulling him apart and open. He pushed back into it, unaware of the shaking, despirate way he drew breath through his mouth as he lifted his head and looked over his shoulder.

Edward knelt behind him, fully clothed, and watched him, brazenly, shamelessly. Al spread his legs and tilted his hips and whined, outright offering himself to his brother. An offering Ed accepted, casually placing Al's hand out of the way, sliding his fingers along the creases of Al's inner thighs, pressing his palm flat between his legs.

"Hurry." Al whined, childishly pitched. "Hurry." He said again, arching his back impossibly, his teeth grit in frustration as his brother fondled him, combing his fingers through the trimmed patch of hair between his legs.

Ed leaned over him, to the side, and Al curled his spine upward like a cat, lifted his head to rub his cheek against the hard lines of his brother's musculature, his back pressed firmly against the skin-warmed shirt Ed wore. When Ed sat back upright, Al nearly followed, wanting nothing more than to sit on his brother's lap and -

"No." Again, Ed firmly pushed him back to his hands and knees. Al couldn't exactly see, but heard Ed open the bottle and wished he could watch, or better yet, put the lubricant on with his own hands, maybe after wetting him with his mouth -

Al's fingers curled tightly into the bedding as the bed shifted, Ed lifting himself to his knees. He pulled at the sheet with his brother's hand on his ass, baring him. The sound he made was inarticulate and pathetically high-pitched as he felt the heavy, wet head of Ed's cock pressed against his scrotum. His thighs trembled as Edward slid it higher between his legs, behind him, rubbing back and forth over his ready opening. "Damn it-" Al whined and tried to push back. The hand Ed placed on his ass held him still. "Brother - you jerk -" anything else was lost in a wavering, insecure cry when Ed pushed in, slowly, steadily, and filled him.

Ed held him in place, watching Al tilt his head back back to free his mouth, listening to his raw, throaty gasps and watching his brother's mussed hair tangle about his shoulders and back. Ed stared, he always did, at those pretty, trembling limbs and the wet, red look of Al's lips and mouth.

Out of instinct, he pet the base of Al's spine, down to the dip of his rear and back up again. He pushed forward and Al spread his legs even more. Ed could only grin to himself, knowing the erratic pattern of Al's breathing, knowing the pretty blush of Al's shoulders which made the blood seal stand out in the sheen of Al's sweat.

With one hand, he held Al's thigh firmly against himself, and braced himself with his automail, his chest to Al's back, his sigh ruffling Al's hair and revealing a line and curve of the blood seal. Al's hips began to rock unsteadily, his muscles tight around Ed's cock, working it mercilessly, the tense lines of his limbs and artistic curvature of his ribs and spine screaming for more. He gripped Al's leg harder, and harder still, and Al just tightened and trembled around him, trembled as Ed used his teeth and tongue to reveal the blood seal.

When he bit it, Al cried out sharply. He kissed the pinked, round shoulders beneath him, shared a breath with his brother as he pressed his cheek to Al's soft one, tucked his face into the crook of Al's neck and breathed heavily and listened to Al purr for him with little, hitching breaths. He opened his eyes to see the blood seal glowing rosily with Al's blush, lifted his hand to touch it, completely, and spoke his little brother's name into Al's ear.

It was a warning, and it excited his little brother terribly, the tremble of Al's thighs moving to his arms and the quiver of his breath. Ed moved, at a slow, controlled pace, thinking of fingers not his own touching that mark whenever Al looked up at him like that, or tried to fuck himself against Ed, making the bed and sweat bitter with the thought of it, bitter enough for that modicum of control.

* * *

Ed grinned wolfishly when he suddenly stopped the brutal, fast pace, the slap of skin against skin ceasing, and resumed a long, easy slide into his brother. Al's high-pitched, gasping, almost-hyperventilation rose into a frustrated wail. He actually had to snicker, despite the ache of his hips and thighs, when Al curled his hand into a fist and punched the mattress out of sheer frustration.

"It's - it's not funny-" Al flicked his hair out of his face and lifted himself on his elbows to glare at his brother, ineffectual with the flush of his cheeks and haze in his eyes. "- you jerk." His back arched sharply when Ed slammed into him at a near-brutal pace, barking out a yell. "You jerk!"

"Just taking my time, little brother." Ed pet him, mockingly. "Two weeks away and those boys taking up all your - our - time -"

"Shut up and fuck me." Al snapped, and Ed's eyebrows raised. He could count on one hand the amount of times Al talked remotely dirty during sex, the majority of them while he was drunk. Despite himself, he picked up the pace a little, making Alphonse groan into the pillow. There, he thought, as he angled himself just right and saw Alphonse curl his fingers tightly into his own hair and the sheet beneath it. He knew every bone and ligament in that small, white-knuckled hand

"If you don't hurry up I swear - damn, Edward, I swear I'll hurt you."

"Oh?"

Al twisted his hips up against him, practically hissing his discontent. "Yes. I'll kick your butt."

"Fine." Ed kissed his spine in a way that made Al temporarily forget his irritated state, pushing up into the battle-chipped teeth and against the hot tongue of his brother's mouth. "Fine." He whispered into the dip between his shoulderblades. "One condition."

"Anything."

"Promise."

"Brother - yes, yes, I promise, damn it -"

"Okay." Ed slid himself in, deep, deep enough to make Al wail softly and tremble, bit the blood seal and suckled it and left another mark on top of his mark, rough and ugly in comparison. Grinding firmly against him while doing so, leaving no doubt in his pretty brother's mind just who was fucking him. "I'll fuck you the way you want." Al pressed up against him, uttering a breathless coo over Edward's hoarse voice. "But you only come when I tell you to."

Ed didn't miss the way Al's knees and toes dug into the mattress and the way his eyelashes fluttered.

"Well?"

"Yes. Yes, I'll c-come when you say - " Al blushed heavily and stuttered innocently. "-please, hurry -"

Ed's grunt of relief was almost animalistic as he set himself to the pace he'd been wanting since he walked in on his brother. The eager little gasps and high-pitched moans Al uttered went straight to his nerves.

He never expected how fucking incredible it would be to hear Al beg his permission to come.

* * *

"So this is what I get for 'cheating' on you?" Al said breathlessly, in the early-morning hours as he reached back and braced himself on Ed's knees, letting his brother's hands guide the firm and quick rocking of his hips.

"Christ, Al - " Ed pushed up into him, pulling him down at the same time. "You knew I'd do that."

"Something like that." Al exhaled sharply, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes, utterly lost in sensation. "A nice perk to it, really." Ed squeezed his thighs, curling his fingertips in. "Harder."

"You manipulative bitch."

"I wouldn't have to be a manipulative bitch if you'd man up once in a while." Al grinned in mischief, breathing hard, upsetting the chaotic, wet disarray of his hair.

"Man up? What would you call this, then?" Ed's scowl lost its edge with the high flush of his cheeks, the tremble in the wide veins of his broad hands. He slid his hands over the sweat-slick curves of Al's thighs and hips and along the gentle definition of his stomach.

"Exactly what I want." Al smiled, satisfied, when Ed dug in and ran blunt fingernails across the back of his ass.

"I don't like treating you this way."

"Yeah, you do."

"Al -"

"It excites me." Al said, thickly, and leaned forward to deeply kiss his brother, lick the stubble of his chin and breath the sharp gasps he exhaled. "You excite me."

"You're such a freak." Ed spoke, hushed, between wet kisses.

"If you only knew."

"Oh?" Ed nudged Al's face to the side with his cheek, giving him access to mark the gentle slopes and always half-formed adam's apple of Al's neck. "Something I don't know about you? That's just wrong."

"Isn't it?" Al sat back up and pressed himself down firmly against Ed, watching him through lowered eyelashes.

"You suck." Ed's hands settled naturally back on Al's hips, then up to fondle the dark and pert nubs on Al's chest, making his little brother squirm deliciously on top of him, and back down, down between his brother's legs, heavy and hot in his palm, sticky from previous orgasms, and Al's voice wavered in a high, relieved cry. "Is that why you delete your internet history? Ow!" He scowled and rubbed his nipple ruefully, still smarting from Al's downright mean pinch.

"Do not overthink when we're having sex." Al pulled demandingly at his flesh hand. "I can always go down the hall if I'm boring you."

"I can always ask Noa about your little fetishes."

Al pouted, but damn if Ed was gonna fall for that. Not even when he bit his lip like that, or whined in the back of his throat that way, or spread his legs wide so he could see or slid his small hands over the musculature of his arms and chest and stomach and sighed with all that appreciation and bit his lip and looked at him with those - oh, hell.

* * *

It was only the persistant weight of Sam's hand that kept Dean from jumping over the table and shoving his fucking fist into Edward's face. The man had the fucking balls to traipse on down to the kitchen, easy as you please, wearing a diabolical grin as if he'd just scored with Heidi fucking Klum and said - "Sleep well?"

"Bet Alphonse did." Words out before logic could wrangled them back in. Edward narrowed his eyes, the wrinkles at the corners making him look old. Shit, the guy could be damn intimidating, highwater pajamas, sex-hair and come-stained stomach all.

"Snored like a rhino since three in the morning. Or was it six? Gee, you know, it's so difficult to keep track..."

"See, now, that's where your wrong. The girls like a guy who's one-hundred percent there, so, keeping track? Never been a problem for me."

The smug smile on Ed's face became strained, more of a mask than anything, before it cracked and every irritable pre-coffee morning disposition came forth like a summoning. "Alphonse would wear your sorry ass the fuck out in ten seconds, boy."

"Again, not a problem, considering I don't fuck scrawny prepubecent kids who - Sam, get your fucking hand off me, it's creepin' me out."

Sam jerked his hands back and Dean hunched his shoulders forward and away.

Any reply - or physical retort - Ed was about to fire off was interrupted by the creak and dry hiss of the elevator door, the soft squeak of Noa's wheelchair. Her blue nightgown hung off her bones in some amophorous shape, and yet her smile bared the small, brown teeth she had left.

"Please don't fight, it doesn't accomplish anything." Alphonse toed down the stops of Noa's wheelchair, kicked open the trash can to empty overnight coffee grounds. "I mean it, Brother." He said without looking, and Ed shut his mouth with an audible 'click' of his teeth. With an old plastic spoon he poured measures of coffee into the perculator. "And that was a very mean thing to say, Dean. Not - " He placed the coffee pot and the little red light turned on. "- that my brother hasn't instigated it. Please go get showered now, Edward, it's impolite to be in front of people like that."

"Look at him naked again and I will rip your eyes out." Ed snapped in a rush, held his palm up to his brother, and turned to the stairs. "Now I'm going."

"He always has to have the last word." Al muttered, setting a pan onto the stove to heat, butter starting to melt and run. Noa hummed a sandpaper sound in vague agreement, watching the morning birds hop and skip away from supine cats through the window. It was silent, as Al stopped his hurried domesticity to watch her, with a timid sort of understanding.

Finally, he cleared his throat and turned back to his task. "Did you two get a chance to review the research?"

"Um, yes!" Sam spoke, hurriedly, glad to focus on something which did NOT involve memories of Alphonse's delighted squealing through the thin walls of the old house. His hands jerked like undecided sparrows as he undid the clasp of the folder. "So, um, this 'Equivalent Exchange' law Alchemy abides by, obviously, demons don't keep to it -"

"Equivalent Exchange is for purely physical things - mass, weight, compounds, so on and so fourth. I'm afraid soul and life have no scale to judge exchange by, unless..." Al looked at him and quirked a brow.

"Not that we know of." Sam sighed. "There ARE accounts of judgement of the soul, the Egyptian Feather of Justice, the Christian Rapture-"

"- Heaven's little black book."

Sam and Al both snorted in amusement, and Dean quirked a sideways smirk. Noa did not look in the least bit impressed, still watching the window and the odd ripples of light, her lips moving to nothing, and Al cast her an apologetic glance. It went unnoticed.

"I'll put in a call to a friend, see if he can come up with something."

"As interesting as weighing the value of a soul might be - and pretentious - Sam, we're not dealing with science, we are dealing with evil spirits. It is completely different currency, and simply can't barter something or someone else in place of Dean."

"True. I hear I got me quite a reputation in Hell."

"Must be your stunning wit and charm." Alphonse spoke in perfect monotone. The bacon sizzled, smoke curling high. He briskly turned away to the stove. Sam stood and plates clattered as he awkwardly set the table, plates misaligned and askew, forks and spoons and knives criss-crossing each other, making the quirky mismatch of coffee mugs seem chaotic.

"Is he sulking?" Dean whispered to his brother. "Really?" His hands were overly frank in the manner he straightened the forks and knives and spoons, setting them properly at the sides of plates.

Sam looked at the table, then back at Dean, holding a tangle of forks and knives in one fist.

"What?"

"Since when - " He gestured, vaguely, at the half-set table.

"Well, chicks dig a guy who knows his way around a kitchen."

"Dean, you know your way around the Denny's midnight breakfast menu."

"Ah, well." Dean smiled a little, a bashful smile. His callouses and the dirt of his hands made the gleaming silverware cloudy as he nudged them into place. "When we were kids, Mom used to invite Dad's parents over every weekened when he was stationed. Gran'd pay me in baseball cards if she got there and I helped mom finish setting up. Feels kinda wrong eating from a nice and proper table with your stupid set-up."

"You keep any of them?" Sam said, awkwardly, and tried to mimick the order of Dean's setting.

"What? Naw, man, I had shit taste as a kid."

"True. Just didn't think it mattered."

"Bet it matters to prissy over there."

Both snickered, and snorted inelegently at Al's very patient sigh.

"Hey, Al, where are the glasses?"

"Rightmost upper cabinet, second shelf." Al said, his back turned to them. His hair was dark and blond, straight, but he favored the same over-long shirts and thin shorts. Except Stanford's rigerous schedule never left them much time to set a table proper.

Alphonse served the typical breakfast fare, and a neat stack of papers alongside a platter of fruit. "These are your copies." He said, taking a seat across from them.

Sam set the haphazard binder between him and Dean, and both leaned over. It was thick with old words and carbon-copy new penmanship, printed web pages and photocopied illustrations, black and white and grey, tied together with neatly color-coded tabs and reference tags.

"It's a miracle. It actually makes sense." Dean said, in fake wonder.

"Of course it would make sense." Al's voice had a rusty and rare-used edge to it.

"No no no." Sam flipped between a diagram of Sulfur of the _Tria Prima_ and one recent demonologist table of demonic possession, then a Latin prayer, _Vencti, Sancte Spiritus_, the Holy Spirit. "Most hunters, they pull their stuff together like a bad scrapbook. Cover their trail."

"Why?"

"Different reasons. Mainly so normal people don't pick up a hunt and get killed doing shit they don't know about. Also, in case we get arrested, don't want our stuff going into evidence."

"Mostly 'cause there ain't much time on a hunt to put together a damn thesis." Dean said, around a healthy bite of bacon-egg-biscuit sandwich.

"Don't speak with your mouth full." Al leaned over and wiped crumbs from Dean's stubble, Dean scrunching his face in reluctant allowance. "Why would you be arrested? Illegal weaponry? Trespassing?"

"That, and we tend to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Al didn't miss the quick, hessitant look Sam gave his brother. His brow furrowed, silvery eyes unsettlingly clear.

Sam swallowed his food quickly, and feigned a casual perusal of the research compilation. "When did you have time to do all this?"

Al picked at his food, dainty in the way he held his fork, as if it were made of porcelain. "Some time after Brother and I were finished." His voice was feigned casual, although a light blush touched his cheeks, and he slipped a glance at Dean. A demure, mischievous smile followed as Dean coughed and fumbled with his glass of orange juice. He inhaled, sharply, a tell-tale chuckle when Sam stared at the bright cuts of fruit on his plate.

Edward's footsteps rang loud and uneven on the wood floor, a towel draped haphazardly over his head, eyeglasses half-fogged from the shower. "So, what do they know?" He snatched a piece of bacon from Al's hand and sagged, gracelessly, into the seat.

"I explained the basic principles to them." Al turned to face him, holding the fork perfectly still, half-in a strawberry. "Equivalent exchange on the basis of matter. We've also found corellations, albeit rough ones, between esoteric and common spirituality and alchemy. It's fascinating, Brother, how closely they mirror each other, in a distorted sort of way. How come we never thought of looking into it?"

"I don't feel like being damned as an amoral dishrag every time I crack open a book. Anyway, good, can't ride a bike without balance." Ed slurped his coffee, loudly, his bare metal hand screeching over the slick mug.

"Exactly, basics, useless as it is for what we're trying to do. Still, they know the basic principles, if not the details for an actual transmutation -"

"-which would be useless anyway."

"They also know about human transmutation in the context of creating a homonculus."

"Sacrifice, red stones, the whole damn thing?"

"Yes."

"Well then. Breakfast." Ed turned to the table with resolution, cracking the vertibrae in his neck as he settled to the very serious business of eating. "Noa, you want some?"

Noa waved a hand vaguely at him, still staring out the window, her eyes half-closed and distant. The cat which had curled in her lap, little more than a kitten, a perfect companion in the dappled morning light through the trees.

"She okay?" Ed scooped more jam onto a piece of toast than was reasonable.

"She's fine." Al snapped, the tines of his fork piercing through the strawberry and grinding over the scratched plate. "What do you mean, 'Well then, breakfast'?"

"Well, that's it, isn't it? That's every damn human transmutation anyone knows of."

"Oh, you lazy idiot!" Al cried. "No it positively is not. How do you explain Scar's arm? Dad and Dante - "

"Sittin' in a tree?" Ed smirked.

Al stared at him in utter disbelief, his fork dropping, with a clang and clatter, onto his relatively bare plate. "Why do I sleep with such an irreverant, immature jerk?"

"Oh, I know the answer to that one!" Ed wiped his mouth, leaving a good smear of jam on his chin. "You love a good - "

"BROTHER."

Ed turned back to his breakfast, snickering in a theatrical manner.

"Anyway." Al said, through gritted teeth, beginning to mince his fruit with the tines of his fork into small, even pieces, with no intent of eating it. "Dad, Dante, Scar - all matters of the physical body, perhaps of anchoring the soul itself, but not the soul - as are homonculi. Unfortunately for us, we don't know soul alchemy - " He held up a finger to shush his brother. "In whatever means it would take to help Dean, and no, I sincerely doubt being able to possess inanimate objects would help in the least."

"It's a step."

"It's a step I was walking blind since I was restored, Brother, you know that. I can't begin to explain how it worked. It was like - like breathing, in a way. Which is why we need you to explain."

"Goddamn, Al, I've told you so many times." Ed threw his napkin clear across the table. It barely cleared Dean's shoulder. "I'd see the damn arrays in my head and just take it from there. It's too multifaceted to even start anywhere. I'd have better luck teaching astrophysics to a-"

"Retarded chipmunk?" Al said, drolly.

"Yes. Exactly." Ed pointed at him in enthusiasm, disconcertingly close to his face.

"So basically, we've just wasted our time because you think we're too stupid to understand it?"

"I never said that! You remember what it's like." Ed's voice dipped into a gentle softness. At this, Al's brow furrowed, and it seemed his eyes turned inward, clouding over without focus, and he inhaled a sharp breath.

"Ow!" Al reached up and pried his brother's hand out of his hair, strands of dark blond tangling into the joints of his automail.

"You can sit there for years and try to figure it out."

"So we've spent the last two fucking days getting nowhere?" Dean snapped, not caring for decorum or polite conversation.

"Yes." Ed smirked, and Dean stood halfway, his chair skidding across the kitchen floor. Sam held him in place, but his silence was unsettling, the way his throat trembled as he looked at Al.

"No." Al said, quickly, and turned to level a glare at his brother. "No. I'll keep looking. I'm sure I can figure out a way to dissect it, at least on a superficial level - maybe putting it into actual words will help -"

"Yes, of course, Alphonse." Dean spat, bitter words. "Dear Diary, today I brought someone back to life -"

Edward barked his laughter, loud and sharp, enough for Noa to look up suddenly, her earrings, hanging low, bell-dull in her hair.

"Must you be such an ass?"

"Who?" Ed smirked.

"BOTH of you!"

"Really? Sam and I are held fucking hostage here, chasing something that's apparently so fucking above us lowly idiots you won't even bother - "

"Dean."

"So we're supposed to, what? Sit around here and play motherfucking pool while you two may or MAY NOT find a way to fix this shit between rounds of obnoxiously loud marathon sex? And while I'm on that - "

"Dean."

"Might I remind you, we are running out of TIME and if it's between kicking some demon ASS or, hey, you know, GETTING some ass or chilling in the International House of Jailbait -"

"DEAN!"

"What, damn it!?"

Sam raked his fingers through his hair and hissed a deep breath, then reached out and forcefully turned his brother by his shoulders to face Alphonse.

Edward's amused smirk, wide and taut and gloating, unreasonable, was overshadowed by Al's soft determination and the open way he held the clip and gun, grip-out, to them. In silence and shuffling footsteps, Dean slowly reached out, and sighed in relief as he felt the familiar cool and weight of it in his palm. Al let his fingertips trail over the barrel, touch the tip and away.

"I didn't know either of you when I said that. I didn't know it would take this long."

"You still don't know us." Dean slipped the gun into his belt, and the clip into his pocket.

Ed resumed eating breakfast with a single-minded relish, while Al just smiled and circled around the table, gently touching his brother's arm, unnoticed. He picked up the compiled research and closed it with a final, crisp snap, and held it out to them. "You can leave. From there, it's up to you."

In the sun and shine of that magazine kitchen, the entirety of it misplaced between Noa's droopish napping and the clink and clatter of Edward's utensils, Sam took the binder with an odd weight of finality in his hands.

"Um, well - thanks." Sam lifted the binder, and let it drop to his side, held close, when Al said nothing. "I mean, it's been a pain, yeah, but, you know -"

"Not alone, Sam." Al stepped to a small table and lifted a cell phone, a sleek, modern model. The screen glowed and the buttons beeped, then Sam's pocket began to ring. Al turned to face them with almost childish enthusiasm, holding the phone up with a small grin. "I know you can easily ditch this number, still, I will call you if I find a solution."

"Don't worry, he hates phones. Won't talk on one unless it's unavoidable." Ed waved a fork idly at them.

"So we can just leave?"

"Yes, Dean." Al's voice hissed exasperation.

Sam shifted the weight of the research between his two hands, turning from Alphonse to his brother.

Dean turned to the door, looked at Sam, and slouched, drawing the broadness of his shoulders in. "Maybe -"

"I think we should."

"Really?"

Sam sighed, glancing up at the molding running all along the ceiling, a plain anchor. "Yes."

"I'll go get Dad's journal."

Al watched, with a tilt of his head, as Dean ascended the stairs. Edward set his fork and knife aside, his hidden glances easing into a lazy observation, and Noa shoo'd the cat off her lap to watch in the reflection of the windows.

The book in Dean's hand was old and worn plain leather, lined paper, parchment, news clippings peeking out in haphazard lengths in some facsimile of order. "Seems like we're about to teach you guys a little somethin'." He grinned.

"Oh?" Al stepped closer, just enough to lean over and peek at the image of a sketched face and flat, black eyes. "'Warding Against Demons'?"

"Just in case."

"In case of what?" Ed wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, eyebrows climbing in undeniable interest.

"In case we've been followed."

* * *

"Weirdest case ever." Dean leaned to the side to see the house, its imposing, black gate ajar. "I would take a hundred zombies over that shit."

"They weren't so bad." Sam's fingers flew over his cell phone. The missed call read 'Unregistered'. Instead, he put in the address for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, New Orleans in Mapquest.

Dean snorted, and keyed the ignition, smiling as the engine purred to life. "Baby, I have missed you." He said, stroking the wheel.

"They tried to help us. Al, at least."

"He's the one who freaks me out the most." Dean dug through the organizing bin for a proper Metallica tape. Sam said nothing, and he relented, as the rough lyrics of One blasted away the cloying stillness of the Elric household lingering at their skin, cold. "It was a lot of work they did. Fast, too. Speak of the little devil."

Sam looked up to see Al jogging, barefoot, to their car, leaves kicked up and wet, clinging to the skin of his calves. Edward watched, from the barest shadows of the doorway, impassive.

"Here." Al thrust a piece of paper through the open window. "If it comes to use."

Sam took it, an old receipt for a ridiculously overpriced bag of dog food. On the back, a phone number.

"You yourself said, there's very little actually known about how these contracts work. Just how they're played out. If you find out anything, please let me know."

"Yes. Of course." Sam pocketed the number, written in fine, even print. "Thanks, again."

"What he said." Dean jerked a thumb nearly in Sam's face, smiling something half-honest.

Al said nothing, just watching them with that oddly distant, somber look. He stepped back, like a skittish colt. Suddenly, with fluid grace and the slip of his hair over his shoulder, he leaned down and pressed a gentle, chaste kiss to Sam's cheek. "Be careful." He whispered, before running back through the iron gates, through the yellow leaves, into the shadows of their doorstep.

"Shit." Dean hissed, and put the Impala into gear.

* * *

"I knew it, man." Dean shook his head for the tenth time, halfway through Nevada. "I knew it, knew he had a thing for you, Sammy. You should burn that number, might be fucking cursed."

Nothing.

"Sam?" Dean yelled, over the music vibrating through the floorboards and the roar of desert air along the monotone highway.

Dean glanced to the side. Sam slept, facing away, head tilted back, as if to see the endless sky.

_It was white and still. Even the invisible settling of dirt and decomposition gasses found in graves was missing from that soulless pristine. Sam stood, and heard nothing, not even his own breathing, and the sourceless light showed him the hinges and seams of that immense door, the bas-reliefs of human bodies and reaching hands._

_Then the door creaked, the glint of a wet eye behind that immeasurable darkness, and from the sudden cold breath he heard the low whisper of Edward's voice. He stepped closer to listen, and his soul trembled as the sultry anguish of Edward's voice warped, suddenly, into a rough ferocity so known to him._

"Give him back - he's my brother - just -"

Dean turned up the music to drown out Sam's voice, and let his foot weigh heavily on the gas pedal. He looked at nothing but the cut of the headlights through the even and unchanging highway.

_End of Chapter Two_

_(To Be Continued)_


End file.
